The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220608_progressives-fail-and-january-6-theater-with-comfo
Aired: 2022-06-08
Duration: 01:36:55


=== Political Shockwaves in California (15:04) ===

[00:00:20]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:31]  Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
[00:00:33]  Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
[00:00:35]  Political shockwaves in California overnight as voters say thanks but no thanks to far-left policies in some of the nation's most liberal cities.
[00:00:45]  First big news out of San Francisco, we talked about it yesterday, where progressive DA Chesa Boudin is out.
[00:00:53]  The son of domestic terrorists who spent their lives in prison after they helped kill a cop, well, three of them actually, was booted, overwhelmingly recalled.
[00:01:01]  Voters there rejecting his soft on crime policies, but he's vowing the fight is not over yet.
[00:01:07]  PSS it is.
[00:01:08]  It's over for you.
[00:01:09]  Further south in LA, the mayor's race is now headed for a runoff with pro-police and one-time Republican turned Democrat Rick Caruso, leading Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass, who was so popular not long ago, she was rumored to be the choice by Joe Biden for his running mate and had considered it to be largely a favorite in this race.
[00:01:33]  Not so much.
[00:01:34]  Now they've got to have a runoff with a guy who was a Republican about two minutes ago.
[00:01:38]  So what does this tell us about the bluest of blue states?
[00:01:42]  And what does it tell us about America?
[00:01:44]  That this state is rejecting far-left ideology.
[00:01:47]  Tried it, didn't work out.
[00:01:49]  Joining me now for the full show: Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes, and the man known to his Twitter minions as comfortably smug.
[00:01:57]  Together, they are ruthless.
[00:02:04]  Welcome, guys.
[00:02:05]  Hey, how are you, Megan?
[00:02:07]  I'm good.
[00:02:08]  I'm excited about the California news.
[00:02:10]  I'm so mad at what happened to those poor people in San Francisco who tried to, you know, take a chance on this guy, which wasn't smart, don't get me wrong.
[00:02:19]  But like, people lost their lives because of his soft on crime ideology, and he deserves to be booted in a humiliating defeat.
[00:02:27]  What do you make of it?
[00:02:28]  Yeah, I mean, look, San Francisco is easily the most progressive place in the entire country, right?
[00:02:33]  Except for the fact that it has been an absolute hellhole over the last two years, largely related to their voting and who they've elected.
[00:02:42]  And in this case, Chessa Boudin, who was, I mean, got to be the poster child for progressive unenforcement of the law.
[00:02:52]  It was all there in Megan's intro, right?
[00:02:54]  I mean, the son of domestic terrorists.
[00:02:57]  Like, and he's the DA.
[00:02:59]  Like, only in America, only in San Francisco, would that be possible?
[00:03:03]  Yes.
[00:03:04]  And the thing is, is that his position was less soft on crime and more just legalizing crime.
[00:03:09]  It's yes.
[00:03:09]  I mean, it's horrific what's been done there.
[00:03:12]  And it's not like it's an isolated area of San Francisco.
[00:03:15]  Or as soon as you land, as soon as you leave the airport, you start seeing what's become.
[00:03:20]  It used to be a beautiful, vibrant town that like you'd visit with your family.
[00:03:24]  I remember my family would go and visit.
[00:03:25]  You could go tour Alcatraz.
[00:03:27]  You don't feel safe anywhere.
[00:03:29]  It's proof that the liberal dream of this, you know, progressive criminal justice reform is a failure.
[00:03:37]  And that cognitive dissonance for the left has been really difficult to accept.
[00:03:41]  And last night you saw a lot of that on Twitter, where you had all of these liberal influencers saying, well, actually, San Francisco is a very conservative city.
[00:03:50]  It's all because of these tech pros and GOP operatives that Chessa Boudin got recalled.
[00:03:55]  It's just they cannot accept it.
[00:03:57]  Oh, yeah, conservatism, alive and well.
[00:04:00]  Literally, 6.7% of San Francisco is Republican.
[00:04:03]  6.7%.
[00:04:04]  This was a recall by Democrats of a failed experiment in You're Exactly Right, Smug, non-law enforcement.
[00:04:12]  The guy, he worked as a translator for Hugo Chavez.
[00:04:16]  His parents were domestic terrorists who spent their lives in prison.
[00:04:19]  Then he got raised by other domestic terrorists known as Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, who were the heads of the Weather Underground, a group that bombed United States facilities like the Capitol building for several years.
[00:04:31]  And people died as a result of their activity.
[00:04:33]  So what, I mean, you do have to ask, what were the San Francisco people thinking putting him in?
[00:04:38]  But a lot of people say they didn't quite realize.
[00:04:41]  They didn't quite do their homework.
[00:04:42]  It was like, oh, okay, I'll just go with him.
[00:04:45]  And people started dying.
[00:04:46]  And the most recent case that got a lot of attention, two women died.
[00:04:51]  They were killed in a DWI accident by a convicted felon who Chesa Boudin let walk with a slap on the wrist for a bunch of other felonies that he had committed.
[00:05:00]  And Chessa looked back and said, you know, gee, you know, you can always sort of use the 2020 hindsight to say, I wish I'd made a different decision.
[00:05:08]  No, he didn't promise any changes.
[00:05:11]  He loved letting the criminals out and not punishing them.
[00:05:14]  And of course, the results of that were always and remain predictable.
[00:05:18]  Yeah, I mean, look, it's been a long slide for San Francisco towards embracing this kind of thing.
[00:05:23]  And you've seen nationally, right, with the defund the police and everything else, how George Soros has funded this network of prosecutors that basically don't enforce the law in localities across the country.
[00:05:34]  We saw that terrible tragedy in Wisconsin where the guy with the parade was somebody who was convicted or at least charged and then released by a prosecutor that was similarly minded to Jessup Boudin.
[00:05:46]  I mean, look, there's a huge case of buyer's regret happening across this country right now with many, many places, but it's so stark in San Francisco because, you know, what was it, six months ago, we had that school board recall with a whole bunch of people that prioritized renaming your schools over actually teaching your kids.
[00:06:05]  And that was, you know, kind of an eye-opener.
[00:06:08]  I would have thought Jessup Boudin would have maybe taken a clue from that.
[00:06:11]  But no, I mean, he continues on his way of not enforcing the law.
[00:06:14]  And here he is recalled.
[00:06:16]  Well, here's what he has to say about it in his speech last night when it was obvious he was going down.
[00:06:22]  We have two cities.
[00:06:24]  We have two systems of justice.
[00:06:27]  Right?
[00:06:27]  We have one for the wealthy and the well-connected and a different one for everybody else.
[00:06:32]  And that's exactly what we are fighting to change.
[00:06:35]  People are angry.
[00:06:37]  They're frustrated.
[00:06:39]  And I want to be very clear about what happened tonight.
[00:06:44]  The right-wing billionaires outspent us three to one.
[00:06:50]  They exploited an environment in which people are appropriately upset.
[00:06:55]  Voters were not asked to choose between criminal justice reform and something else.
[00:07:00]  They were given an opportunity to voice their frustration and their outrage, and they took that opportunity.
[00:07:06]  Now, look, we know over the next couple days, the vote count's going to narrow.
[00:07:11]  And we know that people were writing the obituary of this election before our campaign even started.
[00:07:19]  But we are just getting started.
[00:07:23]  Oh, Chessa.
[00:07:24]  It's over.
[00:07:25]  I mean, the thing is, he makes a good point.
[00:07:28]  I have to agree with what he said.
[00:07:30]  There are two systems of justice in San Francisco.
[00:07:33]  There's wealthy Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and her husband.
[00:07:36]  And then there's the rest of people who have to live with the consequences of these liberals and progressives, where, you know, this guy can get a DUI.
[00:07:46]  We haven't seen a mug shot.
[00:07:47]  Imagine if any talk about Polly P here.
[00:07:49]  Yeah.
[00:07:49]  Nancy Pelosi's husband.
[00:07:50]  Yeah, tell the audience what happened.
[00:07:52]  So he got the DUI.
[00:07:54]  And what's really interesting is you had some journalists look into it.
[00:07:57]  So there was something like a four-hour gap between when he gets arrested and when he gets booked and they take his like blood test to determine his levels.
[00:08:04]  In that four hours, I mean, those numbers can change.
[00:08:07]  The information still hasn't been released with his mug shot, which every other person's is released, especially if they're somehow connected to politics.
[00:08:14]  Are you saying they were driving, driving him around town, maybe to Taco Bell for fourth meal?
[00:08:18]  Yeah.
[00:08:18]  See if we could work down that blood alcohol level.
[00:08:20]  Yeah.
[00:08:21]  Get some bread in him.
[00:08:22]  Let's see how we can get you out of here.
[00:08:24]  Get him a cup of coffee.
[00:08:26]  And then there's the system of justice that other people in San Francisco have had to live under where you go into a drugstore and you're watching it getting ransacked before your very eyes.
[00:08:35]  And you walk down the street.
[00:08:36]  You can't take your kids on the subway anymore because it's basically become a den for people to shoot heroin.
[00:08:42]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  Well, the other thing I really liked about what he said that what Jess has said is he fails to understand like the basic mechanics of an election.
[00:08:51]  And that is like when you are in the incumbent, very often it's a referendum on what you did in office, you know?
[00:08:58]  And he says there, oh, well, people didn't get to choose between criminal justice reform and something else.
[00:09:02]  They were angry and they voted.
[00:09:03]  Yeah, that's called the referendum on you.
[00:09:05]  Yeah.
[00:09:05]  On you.
[00:09:06]  It works.
[00:09:07]  You're responsible.
[00:09:08]  You know, it's a recall.
[00:09:11]  It's a recall.
[00:09:12]  It's literally a recall.
[00:09:14]  They can't even wait to get rid of you.
[00:09:15]  That's right.
[00:09:15]  It's like, we're so mad.
[00:09:17]  You have to be fired right now.
[00:09:19]  You know, people, people are dying.
[00:09:21]  And he takes no responsibility.
[00:09:23]  And I love the billionaire, the Republican billionaires.
[00:09:26]  Okay.
[00:09:26]  That's what did it.
[00:09:27]  Who got this started?
[00:09:29]  Who did the signatures come from?
[00:09:31]  And by the way, you couldn't vote in this election unless you were a San Francisco resident.
[00:09:35]  As I pointed out, San Francisco is only 6.7% Republican.
[00:09:40]  So that's a lie.
[00:09:41]  And, you know, the Democrats proceed with this lie at their own risk, you guys.
[00:09:46]  I mean, you tell me, because I listen every morning, as you know, I try to listen to my left wing and I'll try to listen to my right wing podcast and consume news, print news as well from both sides.
[00:09:55]  And NPR, their take was, okay, well, he, you know, he lost, but it's a runoff in the LA mayoral race.
[00:10:04]  You know, she's still in it, Karen Bass, the Democrat.
[00:10:07]  And, you know, in California at large, like it's still the Democrats game.
[00:10:13]  And this doesn't really tell us anything about national politics.
[00:10:18]  Well, look, I think it tells us a lot about national politics and the way that the wind is blowing here, clearly away from progressive base politics, which get played all the way from the local level in San Francisco and LA to the White House, right?
[00:10:32]  I mean, there is only one brand of Democratic politics right now, and it is off the left-hand side of the map.
[00:10:37]  And it starts in California.
[00:10:38]  And it starts in California.
[00:10:39]  That's what the listeners, the minions in California will always tell us is like, what's happening in California will be happening to the rest of America in 18 months.
[00:10:47]  Yep.
[00:10:48]  You know, and so stopping it in California is really, really, really important.
[00:10:51]  Yeah.
[00:10:51]  No, it's super important.
[00:10:52]  But I also don't want to give people false hope about like California becoming a red state, right?
[00:10:56]  No, no.
[00:10:57]  I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that there was in the governor's election, you know, I mean, you had a couple of guys, Schellenberger, who I know I think you've spoken to before.
[00:11:06]  Love him.
[00:11:07]  Megan, I know we've spoken to.
[00:11:08]  This is like an incredibly smart individual who has some really unique ideas to try to get out of this progressive commitment to ruining cities and try to re-empower the people of California.
[00:11:20]  And like he gets like 3%, right?
[00:11:22]  So a distant third.
[00:11:24]  And the Republican came in second now.
[00:11:26]  So that's who's going to take on Gavin Newsome in a state that is not going to go red at the state level.
[00:11:31]  He'll get waxed 70, 30, right?
[00:11:33]  So like there's still some, still some work to do, but I think in terms of national trends, it's unmistakable.
[00:11:40]  That's the thing because it's like, the point is not that California is going to go red.
[00:11:44]  The point is that in the most blue of blue states and cities, the Democrats have stood up against their radical flank and said, enough is enough.
[00:11:54]  We tried your crazy ass suggestions.
[00:11:56]  People are dying.
[00:11:58]  Cities are failing.
[00:11:59]  You can't, as you point out, use the subway anymore.
[00:12:01]  The people in San Francisco are just leaving their cars unlocked with signs saying nothing inside.
[00:12:06]  So at least they don't get a smashed window as somebody breaks into it.
[00:12:10]  There were more deaths from fentanyl last year than there were from COVID.
[00:12:13]  So they've said, we tried it.
[00:12:16]  We tried it.
[00:12:17]  It's over.
[00:12:17]  And Chesa Boudin's sitting there saying, this is about a movement.
[00:12:20]  This is a movement.
[00:12:21]  He's not entirely wrong.
[00:12:23]  You know, thanks to George Soros and these other DAs that we're watching in city after city.
[00:12:27]  They really are on a mission to open the doors of the prisons, like Black Lives Matter has said from the beginning, it wants no more prisons, they've said, abolish prisons.
[00:12:36]  Good luck with your donations, people.
[00:12:38]  And to just not prosecute crime in general, unless it involves an elementary school child saying the wrong pronoun that they're totally in favor of punishing.
[00:12:50]  Yeah, so I mean, I've tried taking a macro look at what's become of the political environment.
[00:12:55]  And I think the issue for progressives here is they got about half of their plan done.
[00:13:01]  For progressivism, which is essentially renamed socialism, for it to succeed, they have to have a total control over what people are saying.
[00:13:09]  And they've done a great job of enforcing speech in this country, but they haven't been able to maintain total control over acceptable speech.
[00:13:17]  A great example is they were able to maintain it during the election to make sure that any news of Hunter Biden was considered Russian disinformation.
[00:13:24]  But you had this situation where over the past week, you saw a lot of publications try to pump up Chesa.
[00:13:30]  Like the New York Magazine, New York Magazine had an article a couple of days ago being like, San Francisco has a conservative history.
[00:13:36]  You know, there have been elected Republicans and you can see history's or conservative history's influence.
[00:13:41]  It was over 50 years ago that any Republican was elected anywhere near San Francisco.
[00:13:46]  But the fact that they couldn't maintain total radio silence against any dissent is a problem because you saw, I mean, people who work in tech who are far left progressives were fed up with what the conditions were like living in San Francisco.
[00:14:00]  They have to, for progressivism to work, you have to just part of their message is don't trust your lying eyes.
[00:14:06]  Right.
[00:14:07]  When you see the results of progressivism in front of you, chaos, crime, drugs, when you see all of that, they have to keep their supporters on message and say, listen, listen, listen.
[00:14:18]  If you talk about it, it's racist.
[00:14:20]  And to what this program for the, for the midterms, and back to, I think, what Megan, you know, Megan was talking about earlier, is like, that's what Biden and the White House are expecting you to do when you go to the gas pump every week.
[00:14:31]  Exactly.
[00:14:31]  You know, when you look at the shelves on the store and you see the prices are three times what they were a year ago.
[00:14:37]  You know, so the same problem that Chesa Boudin has with the open air, you know, drug markets is the problem Joe Biden has at the gas pump.
[00:14:44]  And that's what's going to happen with the voters in November.
[00:14:47]  So can I tell you on the point you were making, Josh, about racist and so on?
[00:14:51]  Kyle Smith writes today, the Democratic Party's pathological need to demonstrate that it feels guilty about historical racism is the direct cause of the filth, crime, and disorder that have come to define large sections of San Francisco.
[00:15:07]  It's like bleeding heart liberal no longer even comes close to encompassing what they're doing when it comes to law enforcement and keeping our cities safe.
[00:15:16]  And they need to work out their guilt about what happened in America 200 years ago on someone else, you know, not on the innocent citizens of San Fran.

=== Misreading the Electorate's Guilt (03:54) ===

[00:15:25]  Well, and look, I think at its core, liberalism, what it's supposed to be, is about caring for people that are disadvantaged, right?
[00:15:33]  And making sure that people aren't marginalized and things like that, a worthy goal.
[00:15:36]  But what's been perverted over the years is what you just said.
[00:15:39]  It's this guilt that replaces helping people with hurting other people, right?
[00:15:46]  So if you can bring down everyone to a point of the lowest common denominator where you've got crime in the streets, you're not teaching your children.
[00:15:55]  Nobody has the opportunity to succeed in your society.
[00:15:59]  That's basically the platform that they've run on now, right?
[00:16:02]  And you're seeing, I mean, it's a good thing we are in America, right?
[00:16:06]  I mean, look, we have a healthy history of distrusting power, even in places like San Francisco.
[00:16:12]  And so speaking up, as long as we have that pesky First Amendment, is going to be a real problem for these guys.
[00:16:18]  And I think of a huge problem with progressivism.
[00:16:22]  It's absolutely rooted in guilt and it's misguided.
[00:16:25]  They try to make it seem like these policies are compassionate of enabling people to remain addicted to drugs by providing safe shooting sites by not prosecuting dealers, dealers of fentanyl and heroin, not prosecuting them in San Francisco.
[00:16:41]  And they think it's compassionate in that sense.
[00:16:44]  And it's a complete misread, not just on the electorate, but if they feel that they're fighting racial injustice, the great example is I think it was Pew who had a poll drop yesterday where they asked Americans whether they want more police or fewer police.
[00:16:57]  And something like 91% of Republicans said that they wanted more police.
[00:17:01]  Something like mid-60s Democrats wanted more police, but over 80% of black Americans wanted more police.
[00:17:08]  So their last breakout of that, the last breakout of it, the healthiest portion of lack of no police was the wealthiest liberal because progressivism.
[00:17:18]  And his name is Mr. Pelosi.
[00:17:22]  Polly P, we call him.
[00:17:24]  Progressivism really is just like an indulgences for wealthy white liberals.
[00:17:28]  Exactly.
[00:17:29]  That's what it is.
[00:17:30]  It makes them feel better about the fact that, you know, there's people who are poorer than them, basically.
[00:17:35]  But also, it's not just that.
[00:17:37]  It's also wrapped up in identity, right?
[00:17:39]  It's like we can feel bad for certain people who are, you know, poor if they're black or a person of color, but white working class people, no, they're privileged because their skin is white.
[00:17:51]  It's incredible.
[00:17:52]  For Asians, Asians in San Francisco, they were behind a lot of this push because they were getting killed.
[00:17:58]  Like all the crime against Asians in San Francisco was actually shocking in its numbers.
[00:18:03]  And they went to the polls and they pushed this.
[00:18:06]  They must be secret Republicans, all of them.
[00:18:09]  On the subject of cops, jumping down to the LA mayoral thing, which again, now is going to be a runoff in a race that had been at one point considered hers, the Democrat.
[00:18:18]  He, Caruso, pledged to hire 1,500 new police officers within his first term and to build 30,000 shelter beds in his first 300 days.
[00:18:27]  Her plan to reduce crime focused on criminal justice reform.
[00:18:32]  Okay.
[00:18:32]  So it's like the same thing.
[00:18:34]  She's going to do what Chessa Boudin did.
[00:18:36]  And I really feel like this will be an interesting one to watch because LA2 is incredibly blue now.
[00:18:42]  But he, Caruso, has got the endorsement of a lot of well-known stars.
[00:18:46]  Elon Musk, yes, one of them.
[00:18:48]  Snoop Dogg endorsed Caruso.
[00:18:50]  I don't know if I should mention King Kardashian.
[00:18:54]  Are we citing her endorsement?
[00:18:58]  I don't know, but she like a lot of these well-known celebrities are actually going behind, as I said, the guy who was a Republican about two minutes ago and clearly just switched his party affiliation because you can't, you know, you can't win mayoral races in LA if you're not.
[00:19:11]  So that one's going to be an easy, an interesting one to watch.
[00:19:14]  Can let me just detour for a second on the free speech point you were making, Smug.
[00:19:17]  Sure.
[00:19:17]  That Fairfax thing really is disturbing.

=== Fairfax County Free Speech Crisis (06:57) ===

[00:19:19]  That Fairfax County schools in Virginia, a state that used to be red, now is really blue.
[00:19:24]  I don't even know if we can call Virginia.
[00:19:26]  I know they just elected Glenn Youngkin, but I think Virginia is blue.
[00:19:29]  It's not purple.
[00:19:30]  It went red real fast.
[00:19:32]  And sorry, blue real fast.
[00:19:34]  They are now proposing in the Fairfax County schools.
[00:19:37]  It's under consideration at this moment, punishing kids as young as kindergarten if they don't use the proper pronouns selected by their classmates or if they quote dead name somebody.
[00:19:52]  Or like Leah Thomas, for example, the transgender swimmer on UPenn's team is, you know, lived the first 20 years of her life as a man named Will Thomas and was swimming for UPenn as Will Thomas and was 554th.
[00:20:06]  Now Leah Thomas, 12 months later, is number one in the women's races.
[00:20:10]  So if you were in school and you said Will Thomas to the equivalent in second grade, you would be punished.
[00:20:16]  And it's the same punishment that you would get if you had, like if you were fighting, if you punched somebody out in class, they're going to meet out these punishments to kids as young as six and seven now.
[00:20:27]  And parents there are rightly saying, this is a free speech violation.
[00:20:32]  You know, it's a religious rights issue for a lot of parents.
[00:20:34]  You cannot compel my child to say she, he, they, Z, whatever it is this kid wants, and then punish him if he doesn't.
[00:20:44]  Oh, look, it's also a form of child abuse, in my view.
[00:20:47]  Yes.
[00:20:48]  I mean, look, this is, it's so absurd from so many reasons.
[00:20:52]  But the fact of the matter is, is that these kids, if they use the wrong pronoun, it's not out of malice, right?
[00:20:58]  I mean, I don't know if you've seen the like libs of TikTok videos or whatever where these people are given their pronouns and using it in a sentence.
[00:21:04]  And it's like an alphabet soup of misunderstanding.
[00:21:07]  Like I have no idea what they're saying by the end of another language.
[00:21:09]  It's yeah, it's like not an English language.
[00:21:11]  And you're telling me that my kid has to be concerned about this kid's identity at an age of seven that I mean, they're just trying to figure out their own lives at that point, right?
[00:21:23]  They're trying to read, write.
[00:21:24]  They're trying to learn math.
[00:21:25]  They're trying to figure out how to get along with their classmates.
[00:21:28]  They're probably not interested in like being mean about anything.
[00:21:32]  They're just trying to get along.
[00:21:34]  And also, we just spent like a year, 18 months with these schools closed.
[00:21:38]  And, you know, all the studies are coming out now about how far kids are behind, not just in their, you know, arithmetic or science or math, whatever, but also like their emotional development, stuff like that.
[00:21:50]  Like, let's focus more on that than like what people's pronouns are going to be.
[00:21:55]  I'll tell you what the end result of it is going to be.
[00:21:58]  It's the exact opposite of what they intend to happen.
[00:22:01]  What they want is to have everybody accepted, right?
[00:22:04]  That's what they say they want.
[00:22:05]  What's going to end up happening is that kids won't end up associating with kids who have changed their pronouns for whatever reason because they're just kind of nervous about the whole interaction altogether, right?
[00:22:16]  And what does that do?
[00:22:17]  If we're afraid of kids who are different being bullied in schools, does that help?
[00:22:22]  Is that something that works?
[00:22:24]  And I think it tells you so much about what the priorities of a lot of these teachers and school systems has become is not making sure that this kid develops the necessary academic skills that they need, but because of the ideology.
[00:22:37]  I mean, the lives of TikTok account exists basically to show what's become of our school system.
[00:22:42]  Yeah, you see these handover by activists.
[00:22:44]  You see those handouts that it's like, where is this coming from?
[00:22:47]  It's coming from these teachers.
[00:22:48]  It's not coming from the kids.
[00:22:50]  And again, it goes with what I'd been saying earlier of how for progressivism to work, they have to be able to have total control of speech.
[00:22:57]  And they're sayings of like, you know, speech is violence, right?
[00:23:03]  Equating it to violence is how they're able to control it, is how they're able to demand that it be equated to fighting.
[00:23:11]  What we saw over at the Washington Post recently with that whole spatial thing.
[00:23:14]  Oh, we will get there.
[00:23:16]  I have listened to the whole ruthless episode on this.
[00:23:19]  It was the greatest thing I've ever heard.
[00:23:22]  I wanted to redo it here, but to our audience, you should also download yesterday's Ruthless because it was awesome.
[00:23:28]  The fun you guys had with that was second to none.
[00:23:30]  But yeah, you're right about the speech.
[00:23:32]  I want to say, look at the difference between Florida and Virginia.
[00:23:35]  You know, Florida, you've got Ron DeSantis saying you will not put sexual identity or gender identity lessons in curriculum in school.
[00:23:43]  That's not an appropriate subject to be discussing with K through third graders.
[00:23:47]  And thereafter, it should just be age appropriate.
[00:23:50]  The state wanted that.
[00:23:51]  The state supported that, both parties.
[00:23:53]  You go up not that far north to Virginia, and they're basically saying, you must discuss gender identity with kids as young as kindergarten because they need to be told to use the proper pronouns and not to dead name anybody.
[00:24:07]  Otherwise, they're going to get a stain on their permanent record and adjudge bad people.
[00:24:11]  I think there is a provision under the draft consideration that it would have to be considered malicious.
[00:24:16]  But does anybody trust these finders of fact to be reasonable in that interpretation?
[00:24:21]  And even if it is malicious, I can maliciously in the United States of America say, Will Thomas, Will Thomas, Will Thomas.
[00:24:28]  I can do that.
[00:24:30]  It's not a nice thing to do.
[00:24:31]  It's not something I would normally do, but this is ridiculous.
[00:24:35]  It's America.
[00:24:36]  I can say what I want.
[00:24:37]  If I want to offend you, tough shit.
[00:24:39]  That's how our country works.
[00:24:42]  I love bassmag and light.
[00:24:44]  It's my favorite.
[00:24:45]  It's my absolute favorite.
[00:24:47]  Look, part of the reason why Governor Glenn Yonkin is Governor Glenn Yonkin is because of Fairfax County schools, right?
[00:24:55]  It is because of all of the, like the reason that he was elected in the last, he was trailing throughout.
[00:25:01]  In the last five weeks, he closed the door because Terry McCullough stood with the teachers unions and these school boards by saying, yeah, all this stuff is more important than your kids' education.
[00:25:12]  He had one message and his message was we're not going to do that.
[00:25:15]  My guess is, is that this governor is going to begin, you know, you only have one term in Virginia, right?
[00:25:22]  There's no re-election.
[00:25:23]  My guess is that Yonkin is probably going to make some pretty aggressive moves on this front.
[00:25:27]  And for some reason, why is it always, I saw this headline about Fairfax County schools.
[00:25:33]  Why is it always Fairfax County schools?
[00:25:35]  Like, what is going on over there?
[00:25:37]  You always hear the horror stories of what new like progressive nightmare teachers are trying to throw upon the kids, always coming from Fairfax County.
[00:25:45]  Like Yonkin needs to defend the National Guard and have a takeover of the school board over there.
[00:25:52]  By the way, speaking of Terry McAuliffe, the guy who became infamous over the past year for saying parents have no right to dictate what their kids learned in the classroom and they really have no rights in the schoolroom at all.
[00:26:03]  That's the guy who's on the short list reportedly to take over as chief of staff.
[00:26:08]  There are rumors that Ron Clain is going to leave the White House.
[00:26:12]  And literally they're saying maybe Terry McAuliffe, he's like top three amongst the choices.

=== Adam Schiff and CNN Clean House (09:31) ===

[00:26:17]  Like, oh, that's the right message to send to America.
[00:26:20]  That's that's what people want.
[00:26:22]  We got a hilarious bit on this, which is like Democrats in power never have anything new.
[00:26:29]  There's never any new name.
[00:26:30]  There's never any new idea.
[00:26:32]  Like the permanent establishment Democratic Party within Washington, D.C. has recycled the same tired ass names since the beginning of time.
[00:26:42]  If it's not going to be McAuliffe, it's going to be Anita Dunn.
[00:26:47]  I mean, maybe we can find a Podesta out there somewhere.
[00:26:49]  Yeah.
[00:26:49]  Susan Wright over and over.
[00:26:52]  Get Axel Rod back off TV.
[00:26:55]  Paul Bagala.
[00:26:58]  Exactly.
[00:26:59]  Exactly.
[00:26:59]  That's a perfect example, right?
[00:27:01]  Where's Carville when you need him?
[00:27:03]  Although he's now too conservative for them.
[00:27:06]  It's so funny because I had the ladies from Red Scare on the podcast on Monday, and they're very interesting, these gals.
[00:27:11]  They just have a totally different way of looking at everything.
[00:27:13]  And one of the things they had said, not on the show, but in reading up on them before was the Democrats produce no interesting people.
[00:27:21]  If you look at the Republican Party, you know, you've got characters like Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter, and it's like J.D. Bance.
[00:27:28]  Like these are interesting people.
[00:27:30]  Like, what's happening there?
[00:27:31]  What are they saying?
[00:27:32]  Why does everybody focus so much on them?
[00:27:34]  And then why do they upset everybody so much?
[00:27:36]  The Democrats really don't do that.
[00:27:38]  They're just not as interesting.
[00:27:40]  And you can see that in the choices of names you just mentioned.
[00:27:44]  There's so much more to go over.
[00:27:45]  You know that January 6th theater begins tomorrow night.
[00:27:49]  Instead of Masterpiece Theater, it's January 6th Theater.
[00:27:52]  And we don't want to talk about that.
[00:27:54]  I want to talk about CNN looking to a reportedly clean house.
[00:27:56]  Who's going?
[00:27:57]  Who's staying?
[00:27:58]  And much, much more.
[00:27:59]  Don't go away.
[00:28:06]  So January 6th theater is tomorrow night.
[00:28:09]  The fact that they've moved this to prime time just to get more eyeballs on it is such a move of desperation.
[00:28:16]  It's like they were like, no one's watching.
[00:28:19]  No one's paying attention anymore.
[00:28:21]  I need eyeballs.
[00:28:23]  And they're like, I've got it.
[00:28:24]  We'll move it to prime time, which literally is kind of how this unfolded.
[00:28:27]  And so now tomorrow night, all the Nets except for Fox News Channel have agreed to air January 6th Theater live on primetime.
[00:28:36]  They've brought in, because they realize they're terrible at TV.
[00:28:40]  They're boring.
[00:28:41]  No one wants to watch a congressional hearing about anything.
[00:28:44]  Never mind this.
[00:28:45]  Something happened two years ago.
[00:28:46]  We've moved on to other things.
[00:28:48]  They've brought in Tom Goldston, James Goldston, who used to run ABC, ABC News.
[00:28:54]  And he's the guy who kind of took GMA from what was a more substantive morning program to very light, very fluffy.
[00:29:01]  It's basically about car crashes, bad weather events, and celebrities now, which rated.
[00:29:06]  That's how they started giving NBC a run for its money.
[00:29:08]  So the guy knows how to do snazzy television.
[00:29:11]  Not so sure he knows how to do in-depth congressional testimony, but that's their goal is to get him to snazzify it, you know, to sex it up so that people will watch and be as horrified as Adam Schiff is.
[00:29:23]  And I guess vote Democrat in the fall.
[00:29:25]  You tell me what the purpose of this is.
[00:29:28]  Well, I mean, they really opened the full kimono and gave us the full look underneath on this deal.
[00:29:34]  I mean, yeah, I mean, they gave away the game.
[00:29:37]  And there was that piece in the New York Times yesterday that talked about how they were hoping it would, it would, I mean, basically the framework of the entire piece was they were hoping it would reframe the midterms, right?
[00:29:47]  Yep.
[00:29:48]  Like people were not going to pay attention to inflation, gas prices, immigration crisis, war overseas, crime in the streets, and everything else.
[00:29:57]  What they're mostly concerned about is Adam Schiff's view on what happened two years ago.
[00:30:02]  It's ridiculous.
[00:30:04]  If they looked at a single poll, they would understand that the American people don't want to watch it.
[00:30:08]  And that's why they haven't been watching it.
[00:30:10]  Putting it in prime time.
[00:30:12]  I just asked the question, like, do you know anyone that would waste a night literally not watching something like this?
[00:30:19]  No, of course not.
[00:30:20]  But this is sort of the death knell, I think, of what Smug was talking about earlier, which is the liberal dream of command of control over speech in this country.
[00:30:28]  And so you've got, you know, places like the New York Times who are sort of pre-writing what they hope the outcome is from these hearings, because, I mean, what they want is to be able to decide what's important to voters rather than voters tell politicians what's important to them.
[00:30:43]  Right.
[00:30:44]  And it's like, well, the, you know, the voters of Georgia came out and turned out in high, like historic numbers in the primary just a few weeks ago after Kemp passed an election reform bill that you said was Jim Crow 2.0.
[00:30:56]  And then we had a national conversation for weeks about this and it all turned out to be a lie.
[00:31:01]  So like, no, people don't care about the January 6th hearings.
[00:31:04]  They don't care about what Joe Biden says about Jim Eagle or Jim Crow 2.0 or whatever.
[00:31:10]  They care about gas prices.
[00:31:11]  They care about their, you know, their kids' education, things like that.
[00:31:14]  So, I mean, I think it's indicative of what we've been talking about here already.
[00:31:19]  And it was, I believe, Yamish Elsendor, who's, who's a journalist for, I think, NPR or might be at NBC now.
[00:31:26]  She switches around a bit.
[00:31:28]  And she said, it is our job as journalists to make Americans care about this primetime hearing more than they care about gas prices or inflation, which that's your job as a journalist.
[00:31:39]  Your job as a journalist is to state and report the facts.
[00:31:42]  And right now, Americans are seeing the facts before their very eyes every time they go to the gas pump, every time they go to the grocery store.
[00:31:47]  There was a photo that was on Twitter last night of someone at a grocery store that had put a drape over where you could get the section where they had chicken because there's no chicken.
[00:31:57]  There's no chicken at the grocery store.
[00:31:58]  I mean, this is like something you'd hear about in Venezuela five years ago in the news of, oh, that's awful.
[00:32:02]  I feel bad for the people of Venezuela.
[00:32:04]  They can't get chicken at a grocery store.
[00:32:05]  It's happening here.
[00:32:06]  And of course, Americans care about that.
[00:32:08]  And the fact that the left is trying to pressure, they're like, Fox News, why aren't you carrying it?
[00:32:12]  They're putting it on Fox Business, which already gets more ratings than, you know, MSNBC and CNN combined.
[00:32:18]  The fact that they're trying to force it upon people shows it's a political maneuver.
[00:32:22]  It's the thing enforcement.
[00:32:23]  It's thing enforcement.
[00:32:25]  You know, what we talked about with the disinformation board, right?
[00:32:30]  Like that Nina Jankowicz woman was going to be like chief thing in Showtune Tyrant.
[00:32:36]  Ray, right, right.
[00:32:38]  That's great.
[00:32:39]  I love that, Megan.
[00:32:41]  It's not mine.
[00:32:42]  It's from Chris Rufo, but it's awesome.
[00:32:44]  But like whatever our media bettors declare is the thing that we need to discuss that week, they have these enforcement mechanisms to now tell us, no, no, no, you can't care about these other things.
[00:32:52]  You have to care about this thing.
[00:32:54]  Yeah.
[00:32:54]  And you know, I mean, it's not just the Yamish Alcador.
[00:32:59]  It's everyone.
[00:33:00]  Everyone in the media now says that, you know, they're not just reporting history.
[00:33:03]  They have to shape it.
[00:33:04]  And like, that's, that's, this is the result.
[00:33:05]  There was no prime time hearing for 13 service members who died because of Joe Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
[00:33:11]  There's no hearing for how much the price of gas has almost doubled.
[00:33:15]  It's gotten close to doubling since he's taken office because of his policy, shutting down Keystone and domestic energy production.
[00:33:21]  There's no primetime hearing for why inflation has gone up when his Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, said, I thought it might be a bad idea to just make it rain dollars.
[00:33:31]  Maybe that'll cause a bit of inflation.
[00:33:33]  There's no primetime hearing over any of this, which affects every single American.
[00:33:37]  Instead, they have political theater of where they're trying to relive two years ago, hoping it'll save them in this midterm where they're seeing disasters because of all the issues they're ignoring that are their fault.
[00:33:47]  And who wants to see more of Adam Schiff at this point?
[00:33:50]  Are you kidding me?
[00:33:52]  That guy hasn't had enough TV time over the last four or five years.
[00:33:56]  And he's just an unmitigated, unrepentant liar who lied from day one on Russia Gate, still lies after the fact.
[00:34:03]  Even though he spent months saying, oh, you know, I've had this, I've seen this evidence of collusion.
[00:34:08]  I can't show it to you, but I've seen it.
[00:34:10]  He goes in primetime.
[00:34:10]  And then Mueller report comes out and it's like, oops, no, none of that was real.
[00:34:14]  And then he goes back on TV to defend himself.
[00:34:16]  You got the old man worked up.
[00:34:18]  It's true, though.
[00:34:21]  You have no primetime hearing, by the way, on Black Lives Matter riots and, you know, the 2000 plus cops who were hurt during that.
[00:34:27]  They couldn't care less, not to mention those who were killed.
[00:34:29]  No, not worthy, but this is worthy.
[00:34:31]  But I will say this.
[00:34:32]  When I was at Fox News, we dominated in the primetime, just like they do now.
[00:34:35]  And we used to have debates on this kind of thing all the time because when a big event would happen in the primetime, we never wanted to give up our primetime shows because they crushed.
[00:34:44]  And everybody else had these loser floundering numbers.
[00:34:47]  So they'd be like, a hearing.
[00:34:49]  Yo, it's like a live event.
[00:34:50]  And you'd always see CNN and MSNBC go to it.
[00:34:53]  And we would never do it because we were already winning.
[00:34:56]  It's really about money.
[00:34:57]  And so I agree and with, and I'm not surprised by Fox News Channel's decision to keep their winning primetime lineup on the air.
[00:35:04]  And if the Democrats want to get on there, then they can buy ad space on 30 seconds a pop and it won't be cheap and they can bring their message that way.
[00:35:11]  But I'm sure Fox News channel feels no need to give free airtime to Adam Schiff and this theater.
[00:35:18]  National Review called it an infomercial.
[00:35:20]  Somebody else there said it's more like a summer rerun.
[00:35:22]  You know, we've seen this.
[00:35:24]  What's the new information?
[00:35:25]  What is the purpose?
[00:35:27]  But it also has no impact in the lives of Americans, right?
[00:35:30]  I mean, to the point that Smug was making.
[00:35:32]  I mean, can you imagine?
[00:35:33]  Look, these are this is we tend to think of politics just in terms of this show, right?
[00:35:38]  In terms of the campaign, in terms of the ads and the messaging.
[00:35:42]  But actually, these are elected representatives of the people.
[00:35:45]  And can you imagine just for a moment, these people are paid taxpayer dollars.

=== Cheney Subpoena and Crime Charges (09:42) ===

[00:35:49]  They're elected to try to take care of their constituency at some level.
[00:35:53]  And they ignore it to the point where the most important thing to them is something that happened two years ago over the absolute incredible economic distress that their people are actually suffering under.
[00:36:06]  I mean, just that, just that alone is horribly irresponsible.
[00:36:11]  If you're a parent in your car driving from Walmart to a Target looking for baby formula and you turn on the radio and you're being told, hey, you need to tune in to our prime time event talking about January 6th.
[00:36:24]  Are you like encouraged to feel better?
[00:36:26]  Right.
[00:36:26]  You know, is that going to feed your kid?
[00:36:29]  Honestly, it's not even like, I mean, it's not even like they've arrested hundreds of people.
[00:36:33]  The trials are going on.
[00:36:34]  Like, this has been taken care of.
[00:36:35]  You know, they really just want to get Trump somehow disqualified from the next election.
[00:36:41]  And it's like, why don't you just battle it out with Trump?
[00:36:43]  If Trump declares that he's running, you can bring all of this up.
[00:36:46]  You don't need primetime specials.
[00:36:48]  Well, maybe you do, right?
[00:36:49]  Maybe you can't defeat him, but this is just a waste of our time.
[00:36:52]  I mean, they're really, they're going over the edge on this, in my opinion.
[00:36:56]  Now, Peter Navarro was arrested and says he was strip searched earlier this week for not complying with the January 6th subpoena.
[00:37:05]  They had him in cuffs like he's El Chapo.
[00:37:09]  Like Steve Bannon, same, also got, you know, criminally in trouble for not complying with these subpoenas.
[00:37:15]  I realize at some point they're going to have to do it, but there are court proceedings that are going to play out that can determine whether they must and whether they're in contempt.
[00:37:23]  To strip search Peter Navarro over a January 6th subpoena seems a little bit extreme to me, but Liz Cheney says it's necessary.
[00:37:31]  Liz Cheney says, don't try, you know, don't worry.
[00:37:34]  This is bipartisan.
[00:37:35]  And Liz Cheney says they're really onto something.
[00:37:37]  Here's Soundbite 3.
[00:37:40]  I have not learned anything that has made me less concerned.
[00:37:43]  But what's made you more concerned?
[00:37:45]  Well, I think the extent, the expanse, how broad this multi-pronged effort was.
[00:37:54]  Was it a conspiracy?
[00:37:56]  I think certainly.
[00:37:57]  I mean, look, if you look at the court filings, you know.
[00:38:00]  You do believe it was a conspiracy.
[00:38:02]  I do.
[00:38:03]  It is extremely broad.
[00:38:05]  It's extremely well organized.
[00:38:07]  It's really chilling.
[00:38:10]  I mean, oh, can I get, can I go in on Liz Cheney for a minute?
[00:38:13]  Go right ahead.
[00:38:15]  They're lining up right now.
[00:38:16]  The three of them.
[00:38:17]  How disappointing.
[00:38:18]  Yeah.
[00:38:18]  Does she know what Dick Cheney had to go through for her to be handed over that seat?
[00:38:23]  Like that guy did not have it easy.
[00:38:25]  He used to have a drinking problem.
[00:38:26]  He was hanging up electrical wire in Wyoming.
[00:38:28]  He had no future.
[00:38:29]  He clawed his way to the top of power.
[00:38:32]  I don't even know what all he had to do.
[00:38:33]  You know, Dick Cheney had to do some hardcore stuff to be able to get where he did, right?
[00:38:37]  To be like in the situation room on 9-11, making the call whether a jet should be, you know, shot down.
[00:38:42]  He had to go through a lot.
[00:38:43]  And now this is what she does with what she's been handed.
[00:38:46]  This is what she has.
[00:38:47]  It's not just the January 6th stuff.
[00:38:48]  I saw a tweet from her a couple of months or maybe a month ago about how, you know, white supremacy in the Republican Party or whatever, just embracing the left-wing talking points from the media on all this stuff.
[00:39:00]  Like she's auditioning for MSNBC.
[00:39:03]  Like it's absurd.
[00:39:04]  I don't know.
[00:39:04]  I don't know.
[00:39:05]  She might be because her seat is gone.
[00:39:08]  She knows her political future is over.
[00:39:10]  She thought she would get some kind of see.
[00:39:12]  See, a problem with a lot of Republicans who think that if you just go along and get along with the Dens, maybe if I'm nice to them, you'll get a head pass.
[00:39:19]  They'll write something nice.
[00:39:20]  I'll be their nice little conservative pet.
[00:39:22]  Yeah.
[00:39:23]  They'll be nice to me.
[00:39:24]  No.
[00:39:24]  No, Adam Kinzinger got like gerrymandered out of Congress.
[00:39:27]  Okay, right.
[00:39:28]  He's the other Republican.
[00:39:30]  She's going to get vote raced.
[00:39:30]  She's going to get boat raced in her reelection.
[00:39:33]  I don't see the Lincoln Project putting up ads for her.
[00:39:35]  Nope.
[00:39:35]  You know, I don't see any of these George Soros dark money groups cutting ads for Liz Cheney.
[00:39:39]  Nope.
[00:39:40]  You know, she's just going to lose.
[00:39:41]  Yeah.
[00:39:41]  So it's like, what's the actual award for these people who turn coat on the Republican voters?
[00:39:46]  Nothing.
[00:39:47]  Absolutely nothing, except maybe some plotted from the New York Times.
[00:39:50]  Let's go back just for a second to the substance of that, of what she was saying.
[00:39:54]  I mean, I love the question and answer: is it a conspiracy, Liz?
[00:39:58]  Is it a conspiracy?
[00:39:59]  As if there's any American walking the planet that's confused about what happened, right?
[00:40:04]  That Donald Trump did not want to leave office, felt like this election was stolen from him.
[00:40:10]  Like, I personally, my personal view is that it wasn't, right?
[00:40:14]  There was a whole bunch of stuff that happened that was completely ridiculous in terms of unilateral changing of voting procedures to accommodate a pandemic.
[00:40:23]  And that could have very well caused him to lose that election.
[00:40:27]  It wasn't some sort of like rigged voting machine in Venezuela, right?
[00:40:31]  The summer before, when all these governors, especially in Dem legislatures without any input from Republicans, were changing crazy voting laws.
[00:40:39]  Yeah, that's when that's when you know we should have had our eye on the ball and been like, hold up, this is a problem.
[00:40:44]  This is gonna be a problem for the election.
[00:40:46]  That's not being able to stop it.
[00:40:48]  But it's not like a secret of what happened.
[00:40:50]  My point is like you're investigating something everybody already knows.
[00:40:53]  Everybody knows.
[00:40:54]  Everybody already knows it.
[00:40:56]  Is it a conspiracy?
[00:40:57]  But also, but also there's this Hobson show.
[00:40:59]  It's like, oh, you either go along with this ridiculous charade to try to like arrest Peter Navarro and whomever else and all this like use of government, or you're embracing you think January 6th was a great idea.
[00:41:16]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:41:17]  I actually think January 6th was terrible.
[00:41:19]  I think it was an awful day in American history.
[00:41:22]  Do I think that we've solved all of that?
[00:41:24]  Do I think that judicial proceedings are taking place every day?
[00:41:28]  I know that.
[00:41:28]  I know that.
[00:41:28]  I read that in the newspaper, right?
[00:41:31]  The biggest outrage for me in terms of like the Peter Navarro situation, I'm sort of an Article One guy.
[00:41:37]  I think you ought to comply with the congressional subpoena.
[00:41:40]  But why is it only enforced against him and Steve Bannon and not Michael Avenatti during the Kavanaugh hearings when he was lying to Congress and everybody else about a systemic rape culture that didn't exist?
[00:41:52]  Or Eric Holder when he got put in contempt during the Obama administration.
[00:41:56]  Nothing happened.
[00:41:57]  James Clapper.
[00:41:58]  Right.
[00:41:58]  Yeah.
[00:41:59]  None of that happened.
[00:42:00]  Right.
[00:42:01]  That's right.
[00:42:02]  No strip search for those guys.
[00:42:03]  It's only thanks for that, actually.
[00:42:06]  Yeah, it's a good thing.
[00:42:07]  How about Hillary Clinton?
[00:42:08]  I saw you tweeting about this, Smug, tweeting out about Fox News not airing it.
[00:42:12]  They're going to air it on FBN, as we pointed out, but not FNC.
[00:42:15]  They won't air the January 6th hearing, she writes, because they prefer their sedition made fresh on site.
[00:42:24]  My God.
[00:42:25]  And the gall of her, where after losing an election, because she's probably the most disliked individual in human history, her ratings were the worst among anyone selected to get the Democratic nomination.
[00:42:38]  But no, she doesn't accept her loss.
[00:42:40]  She says Russia stole the election, creates this narrative.
[00:42:44]  Her and New York Tandon came up with this idea that, like, okay, we're going to come up with this idea that Trump is a KGB agent.
[00:42:49]  And now, like, her, her campaign manager, I hope he's gotten security.
[00:42:52]  Her campaign manager said, Yes, I was directed by Hillary Clinton to put out this story on the stand under oath at the sussman trial.
[00:43:00]  He admitted it, which we already knew, but it was extraordinary to hear him actually admit that this was all Hillary's doing.
[00:43:06]  Her idea that she made up Russia Gate and the media ran with it.
[00:43:10]  That's the truth in a nutshell, right?
[00:43:12]  Summarized.
[00:43:13]  And now she wants to talk about, you know, acts that betray the United States.
[00:43:18]  Please, okay, spare me.
[00:43:20]  Yeah, I would love to have a subpoena sent out to her in a primetime hearing.
[00:43:24]  I mean, there's a lot of crime she could be called up for.
[00:43:26]  Well, is there any?
[00:43:27]  I mean, has there ever been more public information damage done to this country than that?
[00:43:34]  Than the result of her not being able to process losing to Donald Trump and therefore engaging in a multifaceted four-year-long campaign that ended in an impeachment of the president and 40-some-odd million dollars spent on an investigation that bankrupted a whole bunch of people who were targets of this investigation to ultimately come to the point where we find out it's all bullshit.
[00:43:58]  Every single newspaper treated this to the front page for two, three years, right?
[00:44:05]  Russia could never have been so successful.
[00:44:09]  I mean, they, they, in their wildest streams, Russia wasn't even top 12 GDP on earth, right?
[00:44:16]  This is a country with very limited capabilities, as we're seeing now.
[00:44:19]  They're getting whipped by Ukraine.
[00:44:20]  They can't even, they can't, a country much smaller than them with a much less armed army, military, they're getting their ass whipped by this country.
[00:44:27]  They have no capabilities, but it was built up by Hillary Clinton to be like, oh, wow, Russia is this great threat that could absolutely destroy our country.
[00:44:35]  They've taken over our elections.
[00:44:36]  And this was fed to the public.
[00:44:38]  And journalists made millions with their book deals.
[00:44:41]  You saw so many of these journalists come up.
[00:44:45]  Natasha Bertrand's a great example.
[00:44:46]  Yeah.
[00:44:47]  Who now is what?
[00:44:47]  NBC?
[00:44:48]  Yeah.
[00:44:48]  Has gotten book deals.
[00:44:50]  Everything she's written about Russia now, now we know was just completely made up.
[00:44:54]  David Korn, who wrote that article that was one of the MP.
[00:44:59]  He's at CNN now.
[00:44:59]  He wrote a book called Russian Roulette.
[00:45:01]  None of it true.
[00:45:02]  None of it true.
[00:45:03]  They haven't ripped that off of Amazon.
[00:45:06]  But what Megan was saying about the sedition on Fox, it's incredible how casually liberals now will call Republicans racists and traitors to the country.
[00:45:18]  I mean, just like gutter, gutter stuff.
[00:45:22]  You know, it's just, it's wild to me that that's become so commonplace in our politics is to call people white supremacists and call people traitors to America.

=== White House Aide Warther Scandal (15:25) ===

[00:45:31]  Come on.
[00:45:32]  Meanwhile, especially given the damage she did to our country, to our unity, to our belief in institutions, she unleashed this hell on us.
[00:45:43]  The FBI, you know, the White House under her watchful eye and under suspicion for two plus years, and totally unnecessary first impeachment, you know, and then we can get to the second one.
[00:45:55]  She orchestrated all of that and now has the nerve to think we still want to hear from her.
[00:46:02]  Her HRH can go away.
[00:46:04]  Her Royal Highness, she can go away.
[00:46:06]  I don't want to hear, I don't want to see her fake crying over her stupid loss or hear another word about her thoughts on the election or Donald Trump.
[00:46:14]  She's done.
[00:46:15]  But she lost her.
[00:46:17]  Think of the content.
[00:46:18]  It would be so great to have her back just for the content, though, and the laughs.
[00:46:22]  I mean, I agree with you.
[00:46:24]  Look, I agree with you 100%.
[00:46:25]  It'd be horrible for our country.
[00:46:27]  But think about the humor of her holding on dear for dear life, thinking she's still relevant, you know?
[00:46:32]  And then her cheerleaders in the media and on Twitter would be like, yes, it is her turn.
[00:46:36]  Again, I'm with her again.
[00:46:39]  It's all funny games till somebody ends up on the side of the GW Parkway.
[00:46:43]  Well, look.
[00:46:45]  Look, it could be happening if you read, you know, and we're going to get to this next, but the NBC report on what's happening with the current Democratic president is not good.
[00:46:54]  The White House is adrift.
[00:46:57]  Biden is mystified over his poll numbers.
[00:47:00]  He feels alternately frustrated, annoyed, rattled, and unhappy.
[00:47:05]  And that is where we will pick it up after this very quick commercial break.
[00:47:09]  The ruthless guys are with us for the whole show today.
[00:47:12]  And remember, folks, you can not only find the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East, but you can find us on podcast and on video.
[00:47:21]  If you want to watch the show, which is a fun way to consume it, go to youtube.com slash Megan Kelly and subscribe.
[00:47:27]  If you prefer to listen to it as you're running your errands or you're putting your makeup on or what have you, just follow and download the show on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast.
[00:47:36]  It's free.
[00:47:37]  And there you will find our full archives with more than 330 shows, including the very first time the guys of Ruthless were on.
[00:47:44]  And that's episode 194.
[00:47:52]  So Joe Biden's sad dad.
[00:47:55]  He doesn't understand what's happening.
[00:47:57]  Why don't they love me?
[00:47:58]  Why don't they like me?
[00:48:00]  NBC reporting, as I mentioned, this is a White House that is adrift.
[00:48:04]  Biden feels his aides are failing him.
[00:48:06]  He's mystified over his record low poll numbers.
[00:48:10]  He's quote, twisted about the fact that his poll numbers are lower than Donald Trump.
[00:48:15]  He doesn't understand how that could be.
[00:48:17]  He feels he does not get enough credit for his accomplishments and that the GOP does not get enough blame for what it does.
[00:48:24]  Alternately frustrated, annoyed, rattled, and unhappy, upset AIDS cannot dream up a winning message for the Democrats this fall.
[00:48:32]  Oh, and by the way, does not appreciate all the corrections to what he says by his staff.
[00:48:40]  So great.
[00:48:42]  That is a really good synopsis.
[00:48:44]  That is a really good synopsis.
[00:48:46]  We've done multiple episodes on this, Megan.
[00:48:49]  And the funny thing is, is that the media's first goal is to try to rehab Biden himself by portraying him as a victim of all this, right?
[00:48:58]  That he is a person without any sort of agency whatsoever, despite the fact that he is president of the most powerful country on earth with unified control of Congress.
[00:49:08]  He's got the Senate.
[00:49:08]  They got the White House.
[00:49:10]  Yeah, that somehow the problem is either it's a bad message, bad messengers, or that they've just got bad advice, right?
[00:49:18]  That this is everything would be great if not for all of these external factors that have happened.
[00:49:25]  Life has just sort of happened to Joe Biden.
[00:49:28]  Like, never mind the fact.
[00:49:31]  Yeah, like never mind the fact that like inflation's happening because of Joe Biden.
[00:49:36]  Gas prices are happening because of Joe Biden's policies, right?
[00:49:39]  Every single border crisis is because of Joe Biden.
[00:49:43]  Even Ukraine.
[00:49:44]  You could make a strong case is linked to Afghanistan.
[00:49:48]  Not only that, yeah, exactly as you just said.
[00:49:51]  The entirety of the chaos that we have across the globe is a direct result of the vacuum he created with Afghanistan and the ridiculousness of the way he pulled out of Afghanistan, emboldening China, emboldening Russia, emboldening Iran, all of these different places.
[00:50:07]  Like, that's what he has done.
[00:50:09]  Right.
[00:50:09]  It has not happened to him, but that's the framework we're working with.
[00:50:14]  Right.
[00:50:14]  It's like Joe Biden's driving the car and you're in the passenger seat and he drives it into a wall and then he leans over and he goes, well, do you have any ideas to uncrash the car?
[00:50:22]  You know what I mean?
[00:50:23]  It's like we had a year and a half of pent-up demand of the economy because of COVID and everyone was stuck in their houses.
[00:50:28]  And then he spent $5 trillion and we got inflation.
[00:50:30]  And now you've got reporters and you've got the Biden administration being like, oh, these Republicans don't have any ideas.
[00:50:36]  And it's like, I don't know, how about a time machine?
[00:50:39]  You know, unbelievable.
[00:50:42]  It's so true.
[00:50:42]  I love the fact that now the media is just like, these things are happening to Joe Biden.
[00:50:46]  Yeah, passively.
[00:50:47]  Gas prices are just happening to him when he shuts down domestic energy producers.
[00:50:52]  Like he shuts down Keystone.
[00:50:53]  His day one mission.
[00:50:55]  As soon as he's in office, he's like, shut down Keystone X. Like we have to cripple our country's energy production.
[00:51:01]  And for the media to be like, these horrible things have happened to Joe Biden and his aides aren't serving him well.
[00:51:08]  We all know Joe Biden would never allow these disasters, these policies that he put in place, he's never allowed to have.
[00:51:13]  But here's the confidence of Joe Biden, when he's left to his own devices, he tries to start World War Iii by saying, you know, Putin can't remain in power.
[00:51:21]  Yeah, you know he, he.
[00:51:22]  He says we will defend Taiwan, and which of course I know I think we would.
[00:51:26]  But the fact that he's saying that on foreign soil, and then it's, and then his staff has to clean it all up.
[00:51:31]  We were supposed to be ambiguous about it.
[00:51:33]  Breach of policy.
[00:51:34]  These things are very tense situations and you've got a guy who's you know, I think he's in decline sundowning, if you will.
[00:51:44]  We have a.
[00:51:44]  We have a thing Megan, we call Bracket Man, and Bracket Man's the busiest man in the Biden administration because Bracket man's job.
[00:51:52]  We talked about this.
[00:51:53]  I feel like we're not even there for the birth of Bracket Man discussion.
[00:51:57]  It's like it's.
[00:51:58]  He's got to clean up the transcript by Right.
[00:52:01]  He's now mad that Bracket Man exists.
[00:52:03]  No, you should have laughed my my remarks and, like everyone in the State Department's, like Bracket Man, you got to get on this ace.
[00:52:11]  I love the thought i'm sorry, forgive me, but I do kind of love the thought of Biden, you know, saying like yes, Putin needs to go, regime change.
[00:52:19]  And then seeing the staffers go out and be like no no, we're not changing policy, and being like Mother, be like so mad, like then they go out again on Taiwan, like I was told I was in charge.
[00:52:33]  Why do they?
[00:52:33]  Why do they keep doing this to me?
[00:52:35]  And and like now, like you know, we always see this in these presidencies that falter.
[00:52:40]  What really they need to do is just put Biden out there.
[00:52:43]  They just got to put him out there and um, let him communicate the way only Joe Biden can do with the voters directly, you know, so that they can see him and they can understand who.
[00:52:54]  That is not the solution currently.
[00:52:58]  I imagine there's like some White House aide whose job is is anytime Biden is actually allowed to speak for a couple minutes, he stands off on the side with like a warther.
[00:53:06]  So as soon as button's done, he's like, hey, you know, I got your worthers here.
[00:53:09]  They walk him out and then the aides can come do the cleanup with all the journals.
[00:53:12]  He didn't mean that the worthers class is one of my favorites because look at I mean, they've tried, they've tried this before they tried it.
[00:53:21]  Uh on on uh, the election.
[00:53:23]  You know Jim Crow 2.0, the election reform bill in Georgia.
[00:53:26]  They put him out there to talk about it.
[00:53:27]  Remember the event that nobody would show up at, Stacey Abrams wouldn't show up at, even though you know the president of the United States is coming to do an event that didn't work.
[00:53:35]  Now they're into this january 6th hearing.
[00:53:37]  That's not going to work.
[00:53:38]  They're going to put Joe Biden back on the campaign trail.
[00:53:40]  That's not going to work.
[00:53:41]  So, because the reality is the reality they won't say is all these problems, they can't solve them, megan.
[00:53:46]  They know that they can't solve them.
[00:53:48]  They can't say that.
[00:53:48]  So what they got to do is they got to redirect the attention to the American people elsewhere, and none of it's going to address the actual problems that motivate them and animate them to vote on november.
[00:53:57]  In november maybe Terry Mccaula has answered what Democrats are facing is that, no matter what they try to say, they want to make this about messaging.
[00:54:04]  No matter what they say, right before election day, every American's going to go to the grocery store or they're going to go to a gas station right, and that's going to help decide how they vote.
[00:54:13]  Yeah, it's true, and and there's no primetime summit on that, as you point out primetime Masterpiece theater.
[00:54:20]  Now, you mentioned the press because, of course, they are circling the wagons.
[00:54:22]  The NBC piece was somewhat fair, which is unusual to see that, like any sort of negative coverage of the Biden administration.
[00:54:29]  But now most of them are just running cover.
[00:54:31]  Like, it's really not his fault.
[00:54:32]  These events happened to him.
[00:54:33]  Poor Joe Biden, who could deal with this?
[00:54:35]  You know, like he just inherited these problems and they were all brand new, which is actually what happened to Trump on COVID.
[00:54:40]  You know, Trump actually wasn't to blame for COVID, but that's not how they talked about that happening to Trump.
[00:54:46]  Now, I'm talking about Biden.
[00:54:47]  It's like, oh, all those poor things, they just happened to him.
[00:54:49]  And I would submit to you, jurors, that this is why, in part, the ratings of CNN and MSNBC are truly at pitiable lows.
[00:55:01]  MSNBC, they had their worst week, and this is indicative of May as well.
[00:55:07]  It's not just the week, but they had their first, their worst week this past week in the key demo, which is 25 to 54-year-olds.
[00:55:13]  That's what they based advertisement fees on.
[00:55:15]  So that's what's important in cable news in 23 years.
[00:55:20]  And I think their worst May in 23 years.
[00:55:22]  Their average in that key demo was 58,000 people.
[00:55:30]  50,000.
[00:55:30]  Just by way of like comparison, when I was in the prime time at Fox, we get around maybe 3 million in the overall and about 600,000, 700,000 in the key demo, 600 to 700,000.
[00:55:40]  58,000 in the key demo at MSNBC, not much better at CNN, 96,000.
[00:55:47]  Fox averaging right now, 203,000.
[00:55:50]  This is average across the day.
[00:55:51]  These are dreadful numbers.
[00:55:53]  The American people don't want to hear this.
[00:55:56]  They don't believe these narratives.
[00:55:57]  The Democrats are too depressed to watch television and it's having an effect on the entire left-wing business model.
[00:56:04]  Well, I mean, I was just saying, it actually makes me feel sort of good.
[00:56:07]  We're like three chuckleheads sitting in the middle of a conference room here and we're trouncing CNN.
[00:56:15]  Imagine what we could do with a couple billion liberal bucks.
[00:56:18]  Yeah.
[00:56:19]  Can I just tell you an addendum that's going to make you feel even better?
[00:56:22]  I'm not going to say who, but I did learn recently that a very well-known face from a very well-known cable network recently complained to this person's agent that they wanted to do more in digital media.
[00:56:35]  They needed to get off of this just one trick pony of cable news because no one's watching it and there's no future in it and it's not buzzing.
[00:56:43]  It's not relevant and it's not driving the national conversation anymore.
[00:56:45]  And I thought, yeah, I always like to tell my mom we have more listeners and CNN has viewers, but I mean, it's heartbreaking that she doesn't get that.
[00:56:55]  That's not that great.
[00:56:57]  You're going to have to start adding more networks because CNN's numbers is like no longer impressive.
[00:57:02]  But CNN's going to turn it around, guys.
[00:57:04]  CNN is going to turn it around, right?
[00:57:06]  You read that news.
[00:57:07]  They're getting back to the news.
[00:57:09]  And this is like an audition period now for the anchors who completely telegraphed to America for five years during the run up to 2016 and thereafter that they hate Republicans, that all Republicans are racists.
[00:57:22]  That if you voted for Donald Trump, you're a racist.
[00:57:24]  That was said.
[00:57:26]  They have like a grace period to try to convince America it was all an act.
[00:57:31]  They don't really hate half the country.
[00:57:33]  And if they can now be fair, they might live under the new leadership and keep their primetime posts and other posts.
[00:57:40]  Because it's not, they say that the two most on eggshells, you won't be surprised to hear are Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter.
[00:57:47]  Basically, not Don Lemon or like Brianna Keller or whatever her name is.
[00:57:51]  So anyway, this is what's happening at CNN now.
[00:57:54]  They're trying to get back to news, and people have a grace period to prove that they could actually be news people again.
[00:57:59]  Well, it's funny.
[00:58:01]  I mean, all this news breaks in Axios, which, by the way, Axios must have like an embed at CNN because almost every story about this network comes out through Axios.
[00:58:11]  But I will say, like, the new management over at CNN is saying the right things in terms of what they should do.
[00:58:18]  problem there's a couple of problems right the first is like can you imagine a scenario where these people are actually auditioning for their job and now it's like the january 6th hearings like stelter's head's going to explode if he's going to try to comply with the new directive he's just like physically unable to do that right so like if he's there on monday that that was all nonsense like if he if the stelters in new york on set monday morning This didn't mean anything.
[00:58:48]  Very good point.
[00:58:48]  But secondly, here's the other thing.
[00:58:50]  We looked at the headline.
[00:58:51]  When this came out, we looked at the headlines that they had across the CNN website.
[00:58:56]  You wouldn't believe it.
[00:58:57]  I mean, it was like six stories about Donald Trump in January 6th.
[00:59:00]  Yeah.
[00:59:01]  Oh, my Lord.
[00:59:01]  That's what they're talking about.
[00:59:03]  So like, that's a lot of talk, but I'm not seeing a ton of action here.
[00:59:07]  Well, and it's like, like, how could this fraud ever be perpetrated on us?
[00:59:11]  You know, I mean, you cannot come out and say, you're all racists.
[00:59:16]  The Republicans in this country are a bunch of racist, sexist bigots who are too stupid to know what's good for them.
[00:59:21]  That's what we heard.
[00:59:22]  Need I reference the Wajahad Ali clip and Rick Wilson clip on with Don Lemon, like, yeah, Ukraine, what they think it's a crane.
[00:59:29]  You can't find it on the map.
[00:59:31]  Like the yokel, stupid ass Republicans out there.
[00:59:35]  They're now going to ask those people to say, we're good now.
[00:59:38]  I'm back to the news.
[00:59:39]  Trust me.
[00:59:40]  I got you.
[00:59:40]  I'll cover news that affects your life in a very fair and impartial way.
[00:59:45]  With the same voices, yeah.
[00:59:47]  Right.
[00:59:47]  The same people.
[00:59:48]  That's the thing.
[00:59:49]  That's about a reputation.
[00:59:50]  It takes a lifetime to build, but only a moment to destroy.
[00:59:53]  And what CNN has done, this is the station that, you know, for folks who are old enough to listen to, you remember it really came up during the first Persian Gulf War.
[01:00:04]  Wolf Blitzer.
[01:00:04]  You had Wolf Blitzer standing there in the middle of the desert with scuds flying over his head.
[01:00:09]  And you're like, oh, wow.
[01:00:10]  Like these people are actually doing.
[01:00:11]  And their foreign correspondent worked in Ukraine has been great.
[01:00:15]  But that's, you know, if it's going to be Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter fronting this network, it's never going to work.
[01:00:21]  You're going to have to clear clean house.
[01:00:22]  Yeah.
[01:00:23]  No.
[01:00:23]  I don't, I mean, maybe I'm crazy.
[01:00:25]  I feel like Wolf Blitzer, he might be salvageable.
[01:00:28]  Jake Tapper, fine by me.
[01:00:31]  I don't know about Anderson Cooper.
[01:00:32]  Don Lemon definitely has to go.
[01:00:34]  That Keelar lady, she's got to go.
[01:00:36]  Acosta, obviously.
[01:00:37]  Stelter, obviously.
[01:00:39]  The morning team over there seems openly biased.
[01:00:41]  Like I, I think Chris Licht could potentially save CNN, maybe, but it really will require mass layoffs.
[01:00:48]  I saw the numbers about a week ago and Tucker's rerun at 1 a.m. puts up better numbers than Don Lemon left.
[01:00:55]  Yikes.

=== Oliver Darcy Claims Victimhood (15:08) ===

[01:00:57]  I mean, you got to see.
[01:00:58]  You got a clean house.
[01:01:00]  I love hearing it.
[01:01:01]  Yeah.
[01:01:01]  Well, so they're not the only news organization having trouble.
[01:01:04]  And that leads me to your favorite story and mine.
[01:01:08]  And I know you said on your show, it's inside baseball.
[01:01:10]  It's a little inside baseball, but the audience will appreciate it because while it's an inside baseball story about media, it's so indicative of the larger media and what consumers are feeling and seeing when they read the paper, when they see television, and they think, who's writing this nonsense?
[01:01:25]  Like, who is pushing this bullshit on me?
[01:01:28]  And I, and that brings us to the Washington Post.
[01:01:31]  So as you guys discussed on your show, this all starts with like interminable pest Taylor Lorenz, who once again caused trouble at the Washington Post.
[01:01:42]  And then things just proceeded downhill from there.
[01:01:44]  So Taylor Lorenz once again is back out there.
[01:01:47]  She wrote a piece on people on YouTube and on the internet who benefited from the Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial.
[01:01:55]  And in her piece that went to print, she said she had contacted two of the YouTubers who she named in the piece.
[01:02:01]  The two YouTubers fought back and said, yo, that's not true.
[01:02:05]  You never contacted me.
[01:02:07]  And then instead of being like, so sorry, that was my bad.
[01:02:10]  We tried or whatever the real reason was, she blamed her editor.
[01:02:13]  That was inserted without my permission.
[01:02:15]  It was a miscommunication.
[01:02:17]  And, you know, they were only, they were not the big features mentioned in my piece.
[01:02:21]  My piece was about many more important things than them.
[01:02:24]  Just fucking say you're sorry and shut up.
[01:02:26]  Stop it.
[01:02:28]  Yes, Megan.
[01:02:29]  Yes, Megan.
[01:02:31]  Yes.
[01:02:32]  Exactly.
[01:02:33]  What are you doing?
[01:02:34]  And then she's blaming the editor.
[01:02:36]  Then even CNN, Oliver Darcy, the far left guy, even he's had enough of her.
[01:02:42]  He weighs in saying, yeah, she's like claiming, you know, sort of playing the victim here.
[01:02:47]  Hold on, I have it written down here someplace.
[01:02:50]  And, you know, kind of she did it.
[01:02:51]  Okay, here's what he called her out on her series of tweets blaming the editor.
[01:02:55]  And she was claiming when she blamed her editor, she was the victim of a bad faith campaign.
[01:02:59]  Here's she's the victim, of course, because she's always the victim.
[01:03:02]  And she responded to Oliver Darcy with this.
[01:03:05]  No, no, actually.
[01:03:07]  This type of coverage is so irresponsible and dangerous.
[01:03:11]  Not speaking about herself, speaking about Oliver Darcy.
[01:03:14]  It's misrepresenting my words to amplify a manufactured outrage campaign by right-wing media and radicalized influencers.
[01:03:22]  Here we go, which is driving a vicious harassment and smear campaign against me.
[01:03:28]  And CNN is gleefully piling on.
[01:03:32]  Same woman, right?
[01:03:33]  She outed libs of TikTok, then claimed she was the victim there.
[01:03:36]  Went on MSNBC, said she's pulling out her hair and she's plucking at her skin because, and she was near suicidal because Tucker Carlson once said something not flattering about her.
[01:03:44]  Online hate unleashed against me.
[01:03:47]  She's in the business of generating it, but she can't take it when it comes back her way.
[01:03:51]  She recently claimed that the Drudge report was doxing her and harassing her.
[01:03:55]  And then Matt Drudge actually contacted her and said, who?
[01:03:58]  And she was like, never mind.
[01:04:00]  It didn't happen.
[01:04:01]  I was a lied to.
[01:04:03]  Just made up lies.
[01:04:04]  Right.
[01:04:04]  So that, so you guys take it from there.
[01:04:07]  Well, so not only, you know, was that a lie, which she said about the Drudge Report, she also showed up on the doorstep of the family members of Libs of TikTok's anomaly anonymous Twitter account.
[01:04:17]  Like, think about that.
[01:04:19]  There's so many, there's so many layers.
[01:04:21]  Like, basically, my favorite way to handle this is the way we handled it in our last episode is just stick a quarter in Smug and wind the toy.
[01:04:30]  So, I mean, it's a very long saga.
[01:04:32]  Number one, for her to say, so she says that Tucker Carlson started a hate campaign because he used her name on air.
[01:04:38]  He said her name on air.
[01:04:38]  She considered that like a hate crime, right?
[01:04:41]  When her job is not only giving people's names who want to remain anonymous, she in an article posted the address of where Libs of TikTok lived.
[01:04:50]  And we all know why.
[01:04:51]  It's because she wants to send a mob.
[01:04:52]  That's how the left works.
[01:04:53]  And then they stealth edited it and claimed it never happened.
[01:04:55]  Yeah.
[01:04:56]  Again, lying.
[01:04:57]  And so yet again, she portrays herself as a victim in the aftermath of doxing libs of TikTok, where she does this news piece saying that, oh my goodness, it's like the worst people on the internet find out where you live and they come after you and it's horrible.
[01:05:10]  And that's basically her business model.
[01:05:12]  That's what she does for a living.
[01:05:14]  And then in the aftermath of that interview where she famously like attempted to cry, you know, when everyone starts making fun of it of, isn't that what you do all day?
[01:05:22]  You, you know, reveal where people live and try to send mobs after them.
[01:05:26]  She says it was very insensitive of that cable station.
[01:05:28]  I think it was CNN.
[01:05:30]  The way that they portrayed me, again, making herself she's a victim.
[01:05:33]  And so it was MSNBC.
[01:05:36]  She's throwing editors under the bus being like, I'm the victim here of poor editors.
[01:05:41]  She did the same thing when she was at the New York Times.
[01:05:43]  They must be so happy that they're rid of her.
[01:05:45]  And she's doing the same thing again at the Washington Post.
[01:05:47]  It's incredible what these publications will put up with from her.
[01:05:51]  It's, you know, she's always the victim of every single article that she wrote.
[01:05:55]  It's unreal.
[01:05:56]  Unreal.
[01:05:57]  And then like she clearly made an error here.
[01:06:00]  She did not contact these sources.
[01:06:03]  And her paper said that she did.
[01:06:05]  In her piece, it said that.
[01:06:07]  And then when she's called out on it by media critics, by lots of people, even there, she plays the victim.
[01:06:14]  But as you point out, that is her M.O.
[01:06:17]  We never go to air without it.
[01:06:19]  Here is that piece where she cried on MSNBC about how mean people online are.
[01:06:23]  Stand by.
[01:06:25]  I've had to remove every single social tie.
[01:06:29]  I had severe PTSD from this.
[01:06:31]  I contemplated suicide.
[01:06:32]  It got really bad.
[01:06:34]  You feel like any little piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people on the internet to destroy your life.
[01:06:43]  And it's so isolating and terrifying.
[01:06:47]  It's horrifying.
[01:06:50]  I'm so sorry.
[01:06:52]  It's overwhelming.
[01:06:54]  It's really hard.
[01:06:57]  It's like, if you watch the whole piece, they all were like, me too.
[01:07:00]  I'm a victim too.
[01:07:01]  And I'm my journalist.
[01:07:02]  I think it was journalism over acting because I mean, that was just this poor man trying to cry.
[01:07:08]  You almost want to say, okay, Amber.
[01:07:13]  And that's the thing is, so this latest instance of where she in the article claimed that she reached out to these people, she made the unfortunate mistake of two things.
[01:07:23]  Number one, these are two attorneys.
[01:07:25]  These are attorneys who are giving their like opinion as lawyers on a trial.
[01:07:29]  On a trial.
[01:07:29]  Johnny Depp, Amber Hurst, which comes a lot more credit than some, you know, just a middle-aged lady who watches TikTok all day.
[01:07:35]  I think they might have a better idea and handle on this.
[01:07:38]  And so she says that she's the victim somehow.
[01:07:42]  The problem is these people and the way that the media is going in general, you know, Taylor counts on being at the Washington Post, an institution for journalism.
[01:07:51]  This august institution.
[01:07:52]  Yeah, that she can just do this to people.
[01:07:54]  Well, they've built their own audiences online.
[01:07:57]  They have their own communities and they're fortunate for that because they can get out their side of the story and how Taylor lies.
[01:08:04]  Normally, and what Taylor does to many people who aren't in that position, she finds a regular person who doesn't have their own audience that can have a platform, doesn't have a megaphone, and she attacks them and ruins their lives.
[01:08:16]  And nobody's letting that person back on TV to talk about their PTSD from losing their job and their livelihood.
[01:08:21]  Nobody cares about them.
[01:08:22]  But Taylor Lorenz gets to go on national TV and cry about how unfair her life is.
[01:08:27]  This is someone who went to a Swiss boarding school.
[01:08:30]  And she had a tweet about how she's like, as a middle-class individual, she went to an 80,000 a year Swiss boarding school.
[01:08:35]  If that's middle-class, I mean, I want to hang out with your friends.
[01:08:38]  You know what year she graduated, Smug?
[01:08:40]  Sometime in the 20s, right?
[01:08:43]  Unbelievable.
[01:08:45]  Wait, it's funny because she tries to like paint herself as this ageless.
[01:08:50]  She wants to be like Gen Zer, and she's not.
[01:08:54]  She's like, I think she's a boomer.
[01:08:56]  I don't know what she is, but she's, she's at least in her mid to late 40s, according to most people.
[01:09:02]  But she refuses to just say what her age is.
[01:09:04]  And so now it's become this like continuing thing where it's like, just tell us what your age is.
[01:09:08]  What was your life?
[01:09:09]  My producer's saying mid to late 30s.
[01:09:11]  See, I don't know.
[01:09:12]  That's the thing about Taylor.
[01:09:13]  She's like erased all records.
[01:09:16]  We said this on the episode two days ago, I think, Megan, that somebody on Twitter said that Taylor Lorenz has this same birth, a medieval king in or about this 10-year period.
[01:09:29]  It's because she said her age is one thing to like the New York Times.
[01:09:32]  She says her age is a different thing, like the Washington Post.
[01:09:35]  And like, even on the internet archive, she has sent a letter to them to remove, they can't archive any reference to Taylor Lorenz.
[01:09:43]  It's insane.
[01:09:44]  Yeah.
[01:09:44]  So she tries to remove any trace of herself on the internet, but her job is to try to go through everyone else's internet history and ruin their life.
[01:09:50]  It's a protection racket.
[01:09:52]  And the whole media reporting industry, like Oliver Darcy, and these people, and God bless them for trying on Taylor Lorenz, but it's such an insular world.
[01:10:00]  It's getting really hard to get serious media reporting about media.
[01:10:04]  And that's why shows like Ruthless and you, Megan, are so important for people to hear because these folks won't really criticize each other.
[01:10:12]  No, they won't hold each other accountable.
[01:10:14]  And that's the real problem with their industry.
[01:10:17]  This method of you being the wrongdoer and then claiming that you're the victim when people call out your BS, you know, your errors, your bad behavior is so trendy.
[01:10:29]  And that brings us to stage two of the Washington Post meltdown, which is the greatest.
[01:10:35]  It's like, you didn't see this one coming, right?
[01:10:36]  Like, wait, what?
[01:10:37]  What's happening?
[01:10:39]  And I love, it's like, I was listening to you guys.
[01:10:41]  I think it was you, Smug, who said something about like this Felicia woman who's behind this whole like Washington Post is being exploded from the inside.
[01:10:48]  You're like, I love her.
[01:10:50]  Go, Felicia, go.
[01:10:51]  She's an absolute hero.
[01:10:52]  She's holding accountable the like, you know, systems of power.
[01:10:56]  She was nuts within the Washington Post.
[01:10:59]  So tell us what happened.
[01:11:00]  Start with step one of that saga.
[01:11:02]  There was a retweet by this guy named Dave Weigel and explain what happened.
[01:11:10]  So Dave Weigel has this retweets a tweet that's on the internet.
[01:11:15]  It was, it was like, all women are bipolar or biceps.
[01:11:19]  You just have to figure out whether it's polar or sexual or something like that.
[01:11:22]  Like clearly a joke, right?
[01:11:24]  And he's at WAP.
[01:11:26]  Yeah.
[01:11:26]  Yes.
[01:11:26]  He's also a Washington Post journalist who happened to defend Felicia Saunez when she got herself into some hot water about tweeting about Kobe Bryant's rape allegations as the helicopter is still on fire.
[01:11:42]  Right.
[01:11:43]  And just like the most tasteless thing, this is where Felicia comes in.
[01:11:48]  She calls him out on Twitter, right?
[01:11:50]  For retweeting.
[01:11:51]  You know, he defended her.
[01:11:52]  Now he comes under scrutiny because he retweeted, you know, a stupid joke.
[01:11:56]  It's fine.
[01:11:58]  And instead of like just being silent or whatever, she piles on.
[01:12:02]  She tries to create a shitstorm for him.
[01:12:05]  I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who are terminally offended by everything else that somebody else does.
[01:12:10]  Like, just take care of yourself.
[01:12:12]  But let's just, we live in a world where everybody's terminally offended.
[01:12:15]  So let's just pretend like you are offended by this.
[01:12:18]  Most people in their workplace would go to that person and say, please don't do that.
[01:12:23]  It's offensive to me.
[01:12:25]  Like, I feel like it demeans women, what have you.
[01:12:27]  If that didn't work or you didn't feel comfortable about it, I guess you'd talk to an editor or something like that and be like, hey, you know, can we just try to have an internet policy or something so we don't have this kind of thing?
[01:12:37]  That's what most people would do.
[01:12:39]  Not this lady.
[01:12:41]  She's like, it's time to burn.
[01:12:42]  She's like, I'm taking this fucker down to the studs.
[01:12:45]  And not just, and not, and not, not just quote tweeting him and saying, I don't think this is appropriate.
[01:12:51]  Like saying, I can't believe this is allowed in my workplace.
[01:12:55]  She's like, I love working somewhere like this.
[01:12:58]  And she shared a byline with him like a couple of weeks earlier.
[01:13:02]  I mean, that's just beautiful.
[01:13:03]  Yeah, that's how I knew.
[01:13:04]  Okay, we got, this is a live one.
[01:13:06]  Yeah.
[01:13:07]  This is going to be a problem over here.
[01:13:09]  And so this fight where like every blue check on Twitter jumps into the ring.
[01:13:15]  And you got to pick a side, you know?
[01:13:16]  The thing is that Weigel, you know, he's been at this game for a while.
[01:13:20]  So we mentioned on the show, he used to be at the Washington Post and was let go because he was part of this group called Journeau List when President Obama was running the first time in 08.
[01:13:30]  There's a list served that basically allowed all of these left-wing journalists to coordinate talking points and help elect Barack Bob.
[01:13:35]  Their purpose, their state purpose was to elect Obama journalists.
[01:13:39]  And so when this came to light, Dave Weigel was let go.
[01:13:43]  And so he had to go to other publications, whatever.
[01:13:45]  And then he makes his way back to the Washington Post.
[01:13:47]  Of course, can get rehired after that.
[01:13:49]  Naturally, a funny little wrinkle about that is his job was as a conservative to cover conservatives, right?
[01:13:56]  And when he was fired, guess who he was replaced by Megan, Jennifer Ruba?
[01:14:01]  So they got a real hot hand over at the Washington Post with getting conservative visionary.
[01:14:09]  But what happens here is that it's not just like a one-off thing.
[01:14:13]  She proceeds to go on like a Steve Schmidt like Twitter tirade over like 72 hours where she's laying waste to Dave Weigel, all of her editors, her colleagues.
[01:14:23]  People are chiming in, like, please, for the love of God, stop.
[01:14:27]  And she won't.
[01:14:27]  Her bloodlust is unquenchable.
[01:14:29]  I mean, she's still going, I think, now she was at least last night.
[01:14:32]  And I mean, like, other reports, she's been like, you know, like, first of all, Dave Weigel deleted it.
[01:14:37]  He apologized for it.
[01:14:38]  He's groveled on his hands and knees to be like, please just stop.
[01:14:42]  And she's like, no, no more.
[01:14:44]  The entire institution must burn.
[01:14:46]  And so then Weigel gets unpaid, sent away for a month from the Washington Post.
[01:14:53]  They give him a suspension one month, no pay.
[01:14:55]  Or the retweet.
[01:14:57]  Yeah, for the retweet.
[01:14:58]  And then she's like, okay, who's next?
[01:15:01]  And there was a co-worker who put out this string of tweets where he was like, okay, everyone, just like calm down at the Washington Post.
[01:15:08]  He's a journalist there.
[01:15:08]  He's like, everybody, just calm down.
[01:15:10]  Jose, right?
[01:15:11]  Yes.
[01:15:11]  Jose.
[01:15:11]  Jose Real.
[01:15:12]  And then she quote retweets him.
[01:15:14]  She's like, How dare you?
[01:15:18]  How dare you tell me to calm down?
[01:15:21]  Like, don't you realize this is just more abuse for me?
[01:15:25]  And then she gets the blue checks to come after him.
[01:15:27]  He has to delete his account.
[01:15:28]  This guy's right.
[01:15:31]  But first, he's like, Hispanic and gay.
[01:15:33]  Stop it.
[01:15:34]  Yeah.
[01:15:35]  You can't.
[01:15:35]  And that doesn't work.
[01:15:36]  And Megan, all he's saying is, like, can we just be kinder to each other?
[01:15:39]  Yeah.
[01:15:40]  Like, that's the offensive thing he said.
[01:15:42]  Super offensive.
[01:15:43]  And so she's like, here's how I'm kicking off Pride Month.
[01:15:45]  I'm going to get the only, he says, I'm the only like gay Mexican reporter at the Washington Post or something.
[01:15:51]  She's like, happy Pride Month.
[01:15:52]  I'm going after you next.
[01:15:54]  So she sends a mob after him.
[01:15:56]  And now she's continuing it.
[01:15:58]  Like, like, she's keeping like, she quote retweets him again and again.
[01:16:02]  She's like, oh, wow, he blocked me.
[01:16:04]  What an abusive place this is.

=== Washington Post Newsroom Toxicity (06:31) ===

[01:16:05]  Washington Post.
[01:16:06]  Like, yes, get to that because that's a fun piece.
[01:16:10]  Yeah.
[01:16:11]  So the Washington Post basically sends like an internal email.
[01:16:14]  Their editors of like, we demand a like collegial friendly environment.
[01:16:18]  We demand.
[01:16:19]  And then you see at like the exact same time, all the reporters of the Washington Post, they must have been told.
[01:16:24]  They're just like tweeting from a script.
[01:16:25]  Yeah.
[01:16:26]  They're like, it's, I enjoy working at the Washington Post.
[01:16:28]  While not a perfect institution, I enjoy the collegial collegial and it is like hold up a copy of today's newspaper and blink twice if you're alive.
[01:16:39]  It's like, hey, at gunpoint, they're forced to send out these like hostage letters of like, I enjoy working at the Washington Post.
[01:16:47]  Yeah, so okay, just fill that in a little.
[01:16:49]  Sally Busby is the executive editor for the Washington Post, and she sends out a dear colleagues letter.
[01:16:56]  In this newsroom, we share many important common values: a belief in the power of journalism, hatred of racist or sexist behavior, language, or systems, and blah, We do not tolerate, this is quoting from like the handbook.
[01:17:06]  We do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.
[01:17:11]  Respect for others is critical to any civil society, including our newsroom.
[01:17:14]  We also do not tolerate violations of the policy prohibiting workplace harassment and/or discrimination and so on.
[01:17:20]  And then she goes on and says, Please be constructive if there's an issue with your colleague and collegial.
[01:17:28]  If you have a question or concern about something that has been published, speak to your colleague directly, which by the way, Felicia apparently also did that.
[01:17:35]  She lit him up on her private email on the internal Slack publicly.
[01:17:39]  Like she did have the flamethrower out.
[01:17:42]  And then to your point about the weird Stepharty tweets, here's, I'm just going to pull it from there's like eight here in front of me.
[01:17:49]  I'm deeply proud to be a part of the Washington Post.
[01:17:51]  The Post is not perfect, but I love coming to work almost every single day.
[01:17:54]  My colleagues are collegial.
[01:17:56]  There's the word, collegial.
[01:17:57]  They are collaborative.
[01:17:58]  They are fun humans.
[01:18:00]  No institution is perfect, including the Post, but the place is filled with many terrific people who are smart and collegial.
[01:18:06]  There it is again.
[01:18:07]  I am proud to work here.
[01:18:08]  Another person, I am proud to work here.
[01:18:09]  Another person.
[01:18:10]  Collegiality and collaboration long have been hallmarks of the post culture.
[01:18:14]  It is filled with good and talented people.
[01:18:16]  I'm proud and lucky to work here.
[01:18:17]  Another person, the post newsroom is filled with collegial collaborative respect.
[01:18:22]  What the hell?
[01:18:24]  It's, I very much enjoy collegial work with fun humans.
[01:18:28]  I mean, that sounds very normal.
[01:18:33]  Meanwhile, she's like, fuck that.
[01:18:34]  And then light them up too.
[01:18:37]  It's so amazing.
[01:18:39]  It's like Busby puts out this thing where she literally is like, please, like, we do not tolerate workplace intimidation.
[01:18:47]  Well, she's tolerating the shit out of this because Felicia Sanez is absolutely flamethrowing the entire staff.
[01:18:54]  I mean, literally, there's nobody standing.
[01:18:56]  It's incredible.
[01:18:57]  It's just incredible to me that a newsroom could just become a daycare so quickly.
[01:19:02]  I mean, this is just like some of the most childish behavior from people who are supposed to be adults and professionals at the serious publication.
[01:19:08]  And this is why I enjoy it so much and why I back Felicia in this is because this has been a long time coming.
[01:19:14]  This, this infantilizing of journalism where all these editors now are terrified of the Zoomers in the Slack.
[01:19:20]  Right.
[01:19:20]  They're scared of the kids in the Slack who are all like unionizing.
[01:19:24]  Like, oh my God, sitting at your laptop is not being a coal miner.
[01:19:27]  You don't need to be a member of a union.
[01:19:28]  Right.
[01:19:29]  You're not a lot.
[01:19:29]  You're not a longshoreman.
[01:19:30]  Yeah.
[01:19:33]  And it also, like, this goes back to the New York Times and the Slack after Tom Cotton had that opinion piece.
[01:19:39]  Right.
[01:19:40]  I believe people who commit crime should be in jail.
[01:19:42]  Shouldn't be in jail.
[01:19:44]  Right.
[01:19:44]  And they had a Slack revolt against the editor quit.
[01:19:48]  The editor quit.
[01:19:49]  And now we're seeing the continuation of that here at the Washington Post.
[01:19:52]  And yeah, I mean, I didn't agree with it at the beginning, but Smug has convinced me to his side.
[01:19:57]  Like, let it all burn.
[01:19:58]  This is fantastic.
[01:19:59]  We love.
[01:20:00]  I want Felicia to continue on this, like, just tear, burn the whole place down.
[01:20:04]  I think it's like Highlander, where it's just going to be in the end, her and Taylor.
[01:20:09]  There can only be one.
[01:20:10]  That brings me to my question.
[01:20:12]  So, um, Dave Weigel, who retweeted this like one-line tweet of all women are by, either whatever, racial or not racial, sexual, or what's the other one?
[01:20:23]  Polar, yeah, polar.
[01:20:24]  Polar, thank you.
[01:20:25]  Um, because of that, he lost.
[01:20:27]  Uh, he can't go to work for a month, he gets paid leave for a month, right?
[01:20:31]  Paid.
[01:20:32]  Um, did anything happen to Felicia, who clearly has violated the policy on collegiality that is outlined here?
[01:20:40]  That you are not supposed to attack colleagues online.
[01:20:45]  You were not supposed to attack.
[01:20:46]  So, she's, has anything happened to Felicia yet?
[01:20:49]  And has anything happened to Taylor Lorenz for her sin that we kicked it off with?
[01:20:54]  No, I mean, the inmates are running the asylum at this point, right?
[01:20:57]  I mean, the backstory on Felicia is interesting because after the Kobe Bryant thing, where she inspired just a ton of outrage and people were talking about how insensitive it was to send out allegations of rape during the like seconds after we learned that Kobe and his daughter died, right?
[01:21:12]  I mean, it was, it was, it was terrible, but so she got suspended for that.
[01:21:16]  She ultimately, I mean, at that time, did the same exact play to the people who suspended her, right?
[01:21:23]  And she was doing it throughout.
[01:21:24]  And then ultimately, she sued the Washington Post for discrimination and it was thrown out of court, right?
[01:21:31]  So, all of that backstory, and she's still working there.
[01:21:35]  It tells me, like, I don't think they're, I don't think they have the guts to do anything about any of it.
[01:21:40]  Like, she's going to destroy their entire newsroom, and I'm not sure they have anything to say about it.
[01:21:45]  Yeah, they're not even going down swinging.
[01:21:48]  And apparently, Sally Busby was like, if you could keep this confidential, you know, that would be the appropriate thing.
[01:21:53]  And like two seconds later, it was all over the internet.
[01:21:56]  Everybody's like, F you.
[01:21:57]  They're journalists, right?
[01:21:59]  They're literally incapable of keeping a secret.
[01:22:01]  That's like their job.
[01:22:04]  Where this ends, nobody knows, but um, it will be interesting to see how long the post puts up with Taylor Lorenz's nonsense.
[01:22:11]  I mean, that's that's really the test case.
[01:22:13]  Um, I think you're probably right.
[01:22:14]  They've probably had it with trying to discipline uh Felicia because it doesn't end well for them.
[01:22:20]  Even a lawsuit that gets thrown out is a pain in the ass to deal with, and they certainly don't want another one.
[01:22:24]  But there is a disparity in how they enforce their policy against Dave versus how they enforced it against Felicia.
[01:22:29]  And it's like, if you're fighting for wokeness, even if you're wrong and you're violating policy, you'll be protected.

=== AOC Latinx Term Enforcement (05:23) ===

[01:22:36]  If you're on the wrong side of the woke, you'll go down in flames.
[01:22:42]  That's standby.
[01:22:45]  Standby.
[01:22:47]  Wait, what'd you say?
[01:22:48]  What'd you say, Kelly?
[01:22:50]  Oh, it's unpaid.
[01:22:51]  Okay, my producer, Kelly McGuire, sounds unpaid.
[01:22:53]  He gets unpaid leave.
[01:22:54]  Wow.
[01:22:54]  So he actually lost dough over this.
[01:22:57]  Felicia, not so much.
[01:22:58]  She's losing no sleep.
[01:22:59]  She's losing no dough.
[01:23:01]  She's just losing her tips of her fingernails as she burns.
[01:23:05]  Ruthless is staying with us.
[01:23:07]  There's a lot more to go over.
[01:23:08]  Don't miss our last segment with the guys.
[01:23:13]  Picking up my point earlier about how the gals from Red Scare were saying that the Democrats produce no interesting figures.
[01:23:20]  You know, there's nobody interesting to watch.
[01:23:22]  I mean, all contraire, when you look at, I believe she goes by AOC, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
[01:23:30]  She is, you may be aware, Latinx.
[01:23:34]  She's and would really like you all to call her that and would like you to call every Hispanic person Latinx.
[01:23:44]  And if you don't, you can just go pound sand because here's her message, despite the overwhelming polls showing the Latinx people hate this term.
[01:23:55]  She will speak for them.
[01:23:56]  Listen to her.
[01:23:58]  If putting a little X on your campaign literature is what you think is the difference between winning or losing an election, you need to talk about healthcare more.
[01:24:07]  You need to raise people's wages.
[01:24:09]  You need to talk about more issues that also matter to people.
[01:24:12]  That being said, why are people opting for trying to use Latin over Latinx?
[01:24:19]  Well, Latinx can be convenient in written form because you just put down an X and people can kind of mentally put in whatever vowel they identify with.
[01:24:28]  But it's kind of hard to say.
[01:24:30]  So Latine, you avoid the masculine O, you avoid the feminine A. Latine, E is a little more neutral, so it could be more inclusive to people.
[01:24:40]  For example, what are we doing?
[01:24:42]  That being said, if you don't want to use it, no one's forcing you to.
[01:24:48]  But for people who enjoy trying to figure out language and have it meet the modern age, that's kind of where it's at.
[01:24:59]  Fascinating.
[01:25:00]  It's so fascinating.
[01:25:01]  It's so tortured, right?
[01:25:02]  Because she's trying to have it both ways.
[01:25:04]  And you notice this a lot, Megan, with like the Bernie Sanders left.
[01:25:09]  These are folks who are more about solidarity than identity, right?
[01:25:12]  Like they care less generally about the Latin X stuff or the sort of social issues.
[01:25:18]  They care more about class issues, right?
[01:25:21]  And so for people like AOC, it's really tough because she doesn't want to be that person who's Latin X all the time, but she has to be because there's an enforcement mechanism in progressive politics now that if you're not on board with all of it, you're the other.
[01:25:37]  And can I tell you that the beginning there where she sounds somewhat reasonable and she's like, if you're worried about the X, you should have a better healthcare program.
[01:25:45]  She's not saying that for people who don't want to put it on or for people who do want to put it on there.
[01:25:52]  She's basically saying that the lead into this is about how if you have a problem with this term, you don't like Latinx, screw you.
[01:26:02]  Like get a better healthcare policy then.
[01:26:04]  Like if you think your use of that term is undermining your campaign, you're wrong.
[01:26:09]  You need better policy.
[01:26:10]  So she's really, she is pushing.
[01:26:12]  She wants the term to be used.
[01:26:14]  She's kind of mocking politicians who are like, I'm not using that.
[01:26:17]  Hispanic people hate it.
[01:26:18]  And she's basically like, use it and make them hate you less by having better health care.
[01:26:23]  This is our term.
[01:26:25]  Well, she, the funniest part about this, right, is she's reacting to Democrats who have viewed polls that show Hispanics, 80% of some odd Latino voters hate it, right?
[01:26:37]  And they don't, they're, they wonder where the hell it came from.
[01:26:39]  They say straight up they do not want to be called Latinx.
[01:26:41]  Not 80% of Latinos.
[01:26:43]  They don't call it.
[01:26:44]  And so her colleagues have been like, we're not doing that.
[01:26:46]  Same thing that they did with like to fund the police, right?
[01:26:48]  They're like, no, no, no, like we'll all get beat if we do stupid stuff like that because nobody wants to do it.
[01:26:53]  And she campaign expert AOC, who somehow is a Democrat can get elected in an 80% Democratic district is giving the advice to her colleagues in swing districts that the hell with what they want.
[01:27:07]  Call them Latinx or Latinx.
[01:27:09]  What do you think?
[01:27:11]  I believe he's Latinx.
[01:27:12]  Yeah.
[01:27:12]  You can say it either way.
[01:27:14]  For sure.
[01:27:15]  He'll go with that.
[01:27:16]  But she's in, do that.
[01:27:17]  Just do, you have to come up with better other stuff because if they're deciding on that, so be it.
[01:27:22]  I mean, never mind if you're a Democrat in an Hispanic district, right?
[01:27:26]  That might be enough alone.
[01:27:27]  Well, this is, it's interesting because there is a representative, Ruben Galego, Democrat out of Arizona, who said he does not allow the people in his office to use this term, Latinx, in any official communication.
[01:27:39]  And he said, when Latino politicians use the term, it is largely to appease white, rich progressives who think that is the term we use.
[01:27:48]  It's a vicious circle of confirmation bias.
[01:27:51]  So it's rich, white progressives who want people to use that terms and AOC, who's, you know, as far as you can go left on the woke scale at the Democrats' peril.

=== Netflix Corporate Memo Implosion (06:22) ===

[01:28:00]  Like, good.
[01:28:01]  I hope they listen to her.
[01:28:02]  She should partner up with Felicia and get people policing all the speech everywhere in every newsroom, in every congressional office, and see how that works out.
[01:28:11]  Yeah, she is, she is, for me, what's what Felicia is to smug, right?
[01:28:17]  I love AOC.
[01:28:18]  She is my favorite.
[01:28:20]  I can't get enough of AOC.
[01:28:21]  If she was on all day, every day, I'd be the happiest man in show business.
[01:28:24]  There is nobody, and I mean nobody who can puzzle Middle America more quickly than this lady.
[01:28:30]  So true.
[01:28:31]  Yeah.
[01:28:32]  She's interesting to watch.
[01:28:33]  I'll give her that.
[01:28:34]  Also interesting to watch Maverick.
[01:28:37]  Now, I haven't seen it yet.
[01:28:39]  Yeah, this sort of sequel to Top Gun, but my little eight-year-old did.
[01:28:43]  He went to a birthday party on Monday.
[01:28:45]  And so in preparation for that, we had not yet shown him Top Gun.
[01:28:48]  So the family watched it.
[01:28:49]  And it really is an amazing movie.
[01:28:51]  Top Gun is a great film.
[01:28:54]  It really is great.
[01:28:54]  And Tom Cruise is like one of the original big movie stars from the 80s.
[01:28:59]  You know, like he, he's a star of a different caliber than all these guys, even than The Rock, who's arguably, you know, better known today.
[01:29:08]  But I mean, he's just in that collection of stars who are just untouchable.
[01:29:12]  They don't give interviews all the time.
[01:29:13]  They don't Instagram.
[01:29:15]  They don't need daily stroking.
[01:29:16]  They're just huge stars.
[01:29:19]  Any picture they touch typically turns to gold.
[01:29:22]  And I appreciate that.
[01:29:23]  I mean, he's a very bizarre guy, don't get me wrong, but I appreciate that.
[01:29:27]  Anyway, he makes this follow-up.
[01:29:29]  And as of Monday, I'm sure it's much bigger now, but it had premiered 10 days earlier and it had $548 million in the bank already.
[01:29:41]  It was his biggest opening weekend ever in his own career, which is saying something.
[01:29:47]  He refused to release it anywhere but in the theaters.
[01:29:50]  He wrote, that was never going to happen ever.
[01:29:52]  I make movies for the big screen.
[01:29:54]  Again, I kind of like that.
[01:29:55]  I don't know.
[01:29:56]  I get the problems with Tom Cruise, don't get me wrong, but I like that.
[01:29:58]  It's just a little swagger.
[01:29:59]  You know, the way we used to like our movie stars.
[01:30:02]  The film refuses, refused in the process to go woke.
[01:30:06]  It's devoid of virtue signaling.
[01:30:08]  There are no trans fighter pilots.
[01:30:10]  There are no drag performances at the Top Gun School.
[01:30:14]  There's no monologues about white privilege.
[01:30:16]  And on and on it goes.
[01:30:18]  We were reading some of this from Daily Wire and elsewhere, but it relies on quality storytelling and action scenes that are real and not computer generated.
[01:30:26]  And this is why the Federalist is calling this sequel unabashedly patriotic, free of token left-wing social and political propaganda.
[01:30:33]  And I would submit to you guys the reason why it's already earned half a billion dollars.
[01:30:39]  What do you mean?
[01:30:39]  I mean, absolutely.
[01:30:41]  First off, Top Gun, I say this unironically, is the greatest movie that's ever been made in the history of cinema.
[01:30:47]  I probably watched it 100 times, if not more.
[01:30:51]  It is fantastic in every way.
[01:30:53]  So when I had to wait 36 years or something for the, for the sequel, when this thing came out, I came out.
[01:30:59]  I watched it the moment I could.
[01:31:01]  I saw it is incredible.
[01:31:04]  This is Tom Cruise is everything you want more.
[01:31:07]  They give you everything that you loved about the first one, plus some because the action fighting with the planes and everything, it's just, it's unbelievable.
[01:31:16]  But, you know, to be honest with you, I'm going to go watch it again in the theater because it is the highest and best use of my time.
[01:31:23]  It is so good.
[01:31:24]  I got to see it.
[01:31:25]  I can't, I cannot say enough good things about this.
[01:31:28]  Wow, I got to see it too.
[01:31:29]  But I think, you know, will Hollywood listen, right?
[01:31:32]  Like with the implosion of Netflix and its sort of corporate memo, like enough with you wokesters.
[01:31:37]  We're going to do films and movies that appeal to everybody in this country.
[01:31:40]  If you don't like it, you can walk.
[01:31:42]  And the, you know, the struggles that they're having now that nobody watched any of their woke films and they were disasters.
[01:31:47]  And now you see like Dave Chappelle's special over there, you know, kicking butts, scene with Ricky Gervais.
[01:31:53]  And not to mention what happened with Yellowstone, the series.
[01:31:56]  Like, will they listen now to what normal people want, which is not to be lectured to by this disgusting group of people?
[01:32:05]  Sure seems like they should.
[01:32:06]  I mean, I think there's evidence to suggest that there is some of that happening, right?
[01:32:10]  I mean, Netflix canceled a whole bunch of things, including Barack Obama, if I'm not mistaken.
[01:32:15]  Michelle Obama and Megan Markle.
[01:32:17]  Right, right.
[01:32:18]  And it looks to me like they're repackaging a few things.
[01:32:21]  But I mean, you did a good job of running down all the successes that all these different films and shows have had lately.
[01:32:28]  It's incredibly clear what the consumer marketplace wants here.
[01:32:32]  It's just a matter of whether or not Hollywood will follow.
[01:32:35]  Like for anybody who's watched the Oscars or even a piece of the Oscars over the last 10 years, what they're celebrating is I don't have any idea what they're talking about.
[01:32:44]  Like it's basically, if it's in English at all, I don't understand what the plot line is.
[01:32:48]  You know what I mean?
[01:32:49]  It's like esoteric wokeness.
[01:32:51]  And now you hit something like this with Maverick.
[01:32:54]  Ah, what a breath of fresh air.
[01:32:57]  I think it's also been like a long time coming.
[01:33:00]  You know, it's a great analysis of how Netflix is canceling all this.
[01:33:04]  They felt that they had to cater to a woke audience because they thought, okay, the country's shifting that way.
[01:33:10]  You know, culturally, every star is pushing this garbage down our throat.
[01:33:13]  That must be where folks are.
[01:33:15]  But they didn't get the audience that, you know, they were promised that if you toe the line with what the left demands, the audience wasn't there.
[01:33:22]  The audience doesn't want that.
[01:33:24]  They want to actually enjoy their time where like you'd see stand-up comedy when it's like a left-wing comic versus a normal comic.
[01:33:34]  The left-wing thinks comedy is like, okay, you say left-wing talking point and audience collapse.
[01:33:39]  Like all the late night shows, everyone collapsed like a seal.
[01:33:41]  And it's really just a lecture.
[01:33:42]  It's not huge.
[01:33:43]  It's a lecture.
[01:33:44]  Like people want to be entertained.
[01:33:45]  You go to the movies.
[01:33:46]  You want to be entertained.
[01:33:47]  You see a comedy special.
[01:33:48]  You want to laugh because there's jokes.
[01:33:50]  And people are sick of it.
[01:33:51]  And the other thing, you mentioned Netflix in particular.
[01:33:55]  Some of these entertainment companies are starting to push back on their employees and changing the employee culture, which is, I would love to see that at the Washington Post.
[01:34:03]  It can go ahead and burn, but wouldn't that be nice if maybe they stopped listening to these children and put the business interests of the Washington Post first?
[01:34:11]  But Netflix is doing that.
[01:34:12]  They had this memo to their employees being like, look, there's going to be some content that you object to on our platform.
[01:34:17]  It's going to be content that you like on our platform.
[01:34:19]  If you can't serve our community, then don't work here.

=== Wokeness as a Privilege (02:32) ===

[01:34:23]  Fine.
[01:34:24]  It's tight to economics where we're entering a phase, especially because of Joe Biden, where a lot of folks are nervous about we're headed into a recession.
[01:34:32]  A lot of companies are making cuts already.
[01:34:34]  Netflix's stock is down like 75% so far this year.
[01:34:38]  They're going to have to make decisions based on what's economically sound, not what liberal woke mob wants them to do.
[01:34:44]  What you come to understand real quickly when times are tough and dollars are short is that wokeness is a privilege in and of itself.
[01:34:52]  That's the irony of it.
[01:34:53]  Yeah.
[01:34:54]  Well, it's kind of a continuation of the discussion we've been having all show of like what happened at the Washington Post and what's happening with CNN and MSNBC and where this kind of crazy ideological commitment gets a company.
[01:35:08]  And yet it's still expanding.
[01:35:10]  You know, these corporations that are woke now, they're weighing in on abortion.
[01:35:14]  That's happening a little bit more and like conditioning their dollars like Blackstone and so on and whether you have the appropriate DEI program.
[01:35:22]  They better pay attention.
[01:35:24]  They really better pay attention because I realize what they think the future is.
[01:35:27]  I think it's something very different.
[01:35:28]  And, you know, frankly, we're banking on it, that the reasonable middle will make these companies pay for trying to act holier than thou as they turn their noses up at normal people in America who just want clean air.
[01:35:41]  Yes, they do, and a safe environment in which to raise their children.
[01:35:45]  And they don't want to go on the subway and have to worry about needles being everywhere or somebody grabbing them as we've seen.
[01:35:52]  And they don't want to watch the January 6th freaking theater with the Werthers.
[01:35:57]  That was the greatest reference ever.
[01:35:59]  Cashews, Matlock, Werthers.
[01:36:02]  Who hasn't been there with an elder friend in person in their life?
[01:36:07]  Or they can choose not to and leave it to Megan Kelly and the Ruthless Variety, bro.
[01:36:11]  That's right.
[01:36:12]  We're on it.
[01:36:12]  You guys are the best.
[01:36:13]  It's so, always, so, so fun.
[01:36:15]  Duncan Holmes, Smug, thank you so much for being here.
[01:36:18]  Of course.
[01:36:19]  Tomorrow, we are turning our focus to an important topic that is not spoken about enough, and that is President Biden's mental fitness.
[01:36:27]  You heard the guys talking about whether he is, quote, sundowning.
[01:36:30]  We are going to have a full show from all the angles on this topic alone.
[01:36:34]  Don't miss that.
[01:36:35]  Download the Megan Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher.
[01:36:39]  Also at youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
[01:36:42]  If you'd like to consume the show visually, which is always kind of fun.
[01:36:46]  Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
[01:36:50]  Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
[01:36:53]  No BS, no agenda, and no